


Code Name Lifeboat

by lxghtwoodlxve



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, F/F, F/M, Killjoys AU, M/M, Multi, Space Bounty Hunters Overthrow Evil Capitalist Government, also featuring some very rough drafts, and extra scenes that never got finished, full warning there is very little storytelling prose, i had to get it out of my head but i really can't write long fics (as we know from sanguine), it's mostly planning please don't sue me, posting this now so that it's out of my drafts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:28:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24287398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lxghtwoodlxve/pseuds/lxghtwoodlxve
Summary: The team accept the Level 4 ‘Dead or Alive’ Warrant taken out on a fugitive named Garcia Flynn.Shit, meet fan.[please read the tags]
Relationships: Amy Preston & Lucy Preston, Denise Christopher/Michelle Christopher, Garcia Flynn/Wyatt Logan/Lucy Preston, Jessica Logan/Amy Preston, Rufus Carlin & Garcia Flynn, Rufus Carlin/Jiya
Comments: 3
Kudos: 3





	1. Glossary, Notes, Ect

**Author's Note:**

> oh boy. ohhhhhh boy. i'm sorry in advance  
> okay so this first chapter is gonna be the glossary and pre-planning notes that i made.  
> second chapter is gonna be the 'fic'. it's long. it's super long and not even half of it is prose. the planning wasn't even finished. i'm sad.  
> i don't know why i'm posting this but i'm kinda tired of seeing it in my drafts and, i hate to say it, but i've moved on a little from both Timeless and Killjoys. i still love them, let me tell you i still LOVE both shows, but i'm hyperfixating on different stuff at the moment.  
> in any case, this was not going well, but i still hope y'all like this? and i'm sorry if i got anyone's hopes up.  
> stay safe,  
> nat <3

TAGS: Alternate Universe - Bounty Hunters, Alternate Universe - Space, The Killjoys AU No-One Asked For, Alternate Universe - No Hullen, Emma Whitmore Is Her Own Warning, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Fluff, Smut, In Both Graphic and Non-Graphic Forms, Space Bandit Garcia Flynn, Assassin Lucy, Hackmod Jiya, Sentient Lifeboat, Wyatt’s Logan’s Bisexuality Crisis, We Don’t Deserve Rufus, Interplanetary Class War,

Amy and Lucy don’t know they’re sisters. Amy is basically Pawter, and Lucy was stolen as a young girl. There is a four-year age difference between them,, possibly

Lucy’s real name is Yalena Seyah Preston

Amy’s real name is Illenore Seyah Preston - she knows this and thinks that it fucking sucks. 

Fun Quotes That I Would Like To Use:

Holy crap, I'm the best. I did it. Tell those shitbirds I did it. Wait, don't call them shitbirds. Hey, what's the story with the hot one? The girl hot one...is she seeing anybody?

D'Avin/Wyatt: What is wrong with you people? Is anyone in your family  _ not _ trying to kill each other?

Evi: I'm sorry have, have you never had a family dispute?

Sylas: Seriously.

D'avin/Wyatt: I've never tried to kill my team!...Intentionally...

Zeph: Has the testosterone made you guys all into raging assholes, or did I just miss something?

Aneela: Men need to fight. It gives them meaning, and us entertainment.

Zeph: Well, I am not entertained. Wait, if you’re Aneela in Dutch’s body how can you physically bring anyone into the green?

Turin: Hey, we’re having a standoff over here.

Aneela: It has nothing to do with the physical properties. The plasma operates on a subatomic frequency more akin to radio waves.

Zeph: That makes no sense, radio waves don’t exist on a subatomic frequency.

Johnny: Guys, seriously, lot of guns here.

Sylas: Why would you think we have anything like that?

Kendry: Because the Robbel clan is known for two things: Being a bunch of grasping little parvenus...

Evi:  [ Why, thank you! ](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InsultBackfire)

Kendry: And for being perfectly happy to sell weapons to anyone who has the joy and few scruples to spend it.

Johnny consistently botches fishing metaphors, leading Fancy to ask if he's ever fished in his life.

The team hold Khlyen at gunpoint and talk of how "we now have some big-ass missiles."   
Khlyen: Why am I not surprised that you of all people think the size of your missiles is proof of the power you have?   
Johnny: Did...Khylen just make a dick joke?

Fun facts about the first, mostly complete chapter:

Dalmatia is Flynn’s ‘home planet’. It is named in reference to the various Duchies and kingdoms that would become Croatia, and of course the modern-day region of Croatia. 

Ataxia, my original little Earth-like dwarf planet, was originally named in reference to the disease in Skyrim. I hadn’t yet realised this was an actual real life thing, too - it’s a group of disorders that affect coordination, balance, and speech.

Wyatt sometimes cooks. Rufus is okay when there’s a recipe. Lucy has burnt water before, so the only thing she’s allowed to make is a sandwich.

The nameless guard at prisoner transpo is ex-military and enjoys knitting hats for orphaned Westie kids. He’s called Jamie and if this were a show I hope that he would be played by LL Cool J.

Telen is indeed a canon ring-world at the end of the J colonies. I’ve always thought of them as space rednecks, hence why Wyatt is Teleni. 

Caladium is one of our plants, more commonly known as Heart of Jesus. Unfortunately, our version isn’t carnivorous and definitely doesn’t choke people to death. 

The reason why the Lifeboat has no data on Dalmatia/Croatoan is due to the Complicated Historical Colonising Backstory and the fact that she’s an ex-medic ship. Also, drama.

**GLOSSARY**

Hi! Welcome to MY Killjoys AU glossary. I used this to keep things straight and possibly to post if anyone was too confused - I have had to make some small changes and not-so-small additions to the world for some of my fic to make sense, but hopefully this doesn’t mess with canon too much.

 **The Quad:** A planetary system located in the J Star Cluster. It consists of one dwarf planet and her three moons, which are all intertwined politically, legally, and economically. 

**Westerley:** Qresh’s second-largest moon, and the most populous world in the Quad. It is wholly owned by the Company, and has a long a painful history of exploitation for resources and cheap labour, which has damaged its ecosystem, population, and quality of life. Most of its inhabitants are low-class, generally lured by Company promises for more desirable citizenship on Leith or Qresh. It’s generally crime-ridden, crowded, and dirty.

 **Leith:** The last to be colonised, and essentially the least damaged, Leith is a haven for the middle-classes. In the beginning, those who lost lands on Qresh due to rising sea levels gave up everything to move to Leith. They were then followed by those who grew too rich for Westerly and wanted a better life, but didn’t have the political or hereditary pedigree to move to Qresh. 

**Qresh:** Qresh was originally the only inhabited place in the Quad. Once land got scarce due to a growing population, The Company spearheaded the colonisation of her three moons. Once The Company offloaded most of the Qreshi population, it became an ‘oasis for the elites of the Quad’ - only artists, politicians, scientists, inventors, corporate tycoons and respected scholars actually live there. Land rights on Qresh are heavily influenced by hereditary claims and ‘old money family lineage’, which leaves very little room for immigration. 

**Arkyn:** Arkyn is the smallest of Qresh’s moons, and the first one to be terraformed. No-one knows what really went so wrong, but they just know that the planet is no longer habitable.

 **The Nine Families of Qresh:** The Nine families control the Company. They are the aristocrats of the Quad and are the landowners of most of Qresh. Their inheritance of land is crucial, as when a family doesn’t have an heir, this creates a vaccum within the Nine, and can lead to war over trying to annex both the lands and Company seat. Lesser relatives of the Nine are relegated to live on Leith. 

**The Company:** A massive corporation that operates within the Quad and controls industry, land, and mining rights, as well as many other aspects of commerce. The Nine are the families that control the Company, and any Qreshi citizen has a share proportionate to the amount of land they own. The Company’s operations are so infused within the Quad that it’s difficult to tell where the Company ends and where the government begins. 

**The R.A.C.:** The Reclamation Apprehension Coalition is commonly shortened to just the R.A.C., and is an independent, neutral peace-keeping party that operates throughout the J Star Cluster. They license, govern and discipline Reclamations Agents and issue Warrants for clients. The R.A.C. has a strained relationship with the Company. 

**The Rack:** A cruiser ship serving as the Quad HQ for the R.A.C., where senior officers can issue Warrants, manage current agents, and recruit new ones. 

**Killjoys:** Slang term for Reclamation Agents. They have broad authority within the confines of each individual Warrant, but have no interest, power or adherence to local laws or customs. There are five ranks of Killjoy, which correspond to the average difficulty of each level of Warrant.

 **Standard Warrants:** Official documents that are issued by the R.A.C. to authorise missions. They are usually taken by one team, and offered by Warrant brokers. There are five types of standard Warrant: Level 1 Reclamation Warrants, Level 2 Transfer Warrants, Level 3 Apprehension (Live) Warrants, Level 4 Apprehension (Live or Dead) Warrants, and Level 5 Apprehension (Dead) Warrants. Only someone of equal or higher rank can accept a Warrant of each level. 

**Non-Standard Warrants:** There are a few other types of Warrant that may require explanation. The first is the Claim and Clear Warrant, which allow Killjoys to salvage abandoned vessels. A Black Warrant is a competitive Warrant in which several teams are set against a single target.

 **Scarbacks:** The Scarbacks are a religious group of monks that practice suspension, the act of suspending a human body from hooks that have been put through temporary body piercings. With their religious connections, Scarbacks can move more freely throughout The Quad than most of the population. The Scarback faith grew up in the mines of Westerley, which have underground temples. The monks use scarification, involving superficially cutting words into their skin as a permanent body modification, as a method of writing scriptures onto the skin of their backs. Scriptures are written in the Old Word, the ancient language of the monks. Symbols are also used in representing certain scriptures. There is a Scarback Monastery on Leith where monks pursue their theological studies. The monastery contains a repository of early Scarback Scriptures.

 **The Seventh Gen Accords:** Approximately 200 years before our story, the Nine voted the Accord into place. It declared that if Westerlyns worked Company jobs, and worked well, then after seven generations the family would be granted land on Leith as a reward for their service. 

**Dalmatia:** A small moon that I invented a few systems down from the Quad. It was liberated from the tyrannical Esclav dynasty, and has a weak but improving trade with the other moons in it’s system, as well as others throughout the J. Known for its arts, culture, and weapons. Counties include Croatoan (more commonly known as Croatia), Illyri, Zadar, and Istria. 

**Telen:** A tiny ringed planet in the J Star Cluster. While it is otherwise unimportant, Telen is home to the J’s only silica sand storms - not unlike the black rain found on Westerley, it is comprised of silicon-based sand, and will strip the flesh from your bones within minutes. 

**Hokk:** The term refers both to the wine-like beverage drunk throughout the Quad and the plant used to produce it. Varieties of Hokk include the pale orange Yrda, the deep wine-red Gorudo, and the pale yellow Shiro. There are also different production methods; in our story Jess refers to “dry-pressed Hokk”. ‘Hokk 9’ is a bootleg variety, and it's production and sale are illegal throughout the Quad.

 **Joy:** A type of currency used in the Quad. Usually printed in durable plastic notes. 


	2. The 'Fic'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> okay okay i know what you might be thinking: but nat, the first chapter was tags and utter nonsense! what the hell, man!  
> yeah u right  
> my bad  
> quarantine is fucking with my brain. sorry if i sound super shitty about my stuff.  
> forreal though i'm sorry. this is the fic. or what was going to be the fic. i actually decided not to put some of the scenes in because yikes but i'll put those in a separate chapter after this if you want them.  
> i gotta say this too: THIS IS NOT FINISHED. not even the planning was finished. i'm prepared for y'all to smite me. it's okay.  
> stay safe or so help me god,  
> nat <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please let me know if the formatting is hard to read! i'll do something to make it easier if anyone needs it uwu

**CHAPTER ONE - WILD, WILD WESTERLYN**

**Old Town - Westerley - The Quad**

Enzo Galang, former miner and current fugitive from a Level 4 Warrant, is supposed to be an easy catch. Ambush him on his way to work, say that he’s been ‘locked and served’, and have him stowed at a Company prisoner transpo by noon. Plan A: simple, foolproof, two thousand Joy in the bank. 

But then again, they’re Reclamation Agents. It’s literally never easy.

“Cover’s blown!”

Enzo isn’t armed, he’s not dangerous - except for the fact that he’s a murderer - but holy shit, can he run. 

_“Hey! Stop him!”_ He hears Lucy yell through the comms.

 _“Tell me that you got him.”_ Rufus groans.

“Next time you say east, don’t mean west!” Wyatt snaps.

Wyatt can almost smell Rufus’ outrage. _“It’s not my fault the Army didn’t teach you how to use a compass.”_

Wyatt can only growl, and run faster. 

_“Wyatt, how do you think this will look to the RAC if you don’t catch your first Level 4?”_ Lucy warns, but Wyatt’s too focused to answer. 

Rufus replies. _“Fail, right? It’s a fail. They don’t like that, when you’re a newly-minted Killjoy.”_

Wyatt hops over another cart - how did Enzo get a goddamn _bike_ \- and grunts.

Lucy sighs. _“Plan B, then, I think.”_

“What’s plan B?” 

_“The plan where Lucy and I take over because you have no sense of direction.”_

He hears the clunk of change and Lucy saying something in a Westie dialect, and he rounds the corner, Enzo finally back in his sights. He sees Lucy dip a metal cup into a pan full of hot… something. Possibly soup. He isn’t sure.

She throws the Mysterious Hot Liquid into Enzo’s face as he passes her, and he goes down like a sack of bricks. 

“Whoops.” She deadpans, and hands another few Joy to the stall’s owner.

Wyatt skids to a stop, and huffs, hands braced on his knees.

“So, if I’m the one to tag him, it’s still my collar. Right?” He says in between breaths. He can hear Rufus laughing to himself, and ignores it. 

Lucy narrows her eyes, but she’s smiling again. “Say pretty please.”

“Tag this, jakkhole!” An outraged Enzo shouts, and boots Wyatt in the balls.

Lucy pretends that she doesn’t find this whole thing hilarious, but he can hear her smothering her laughter as they take off running again. He can hear Rufus running, too, which is gratifying, but he’s in hot pursuit and not actually sure where Enzo’s trying to escape to. 

“Rufus, you got a bead on him?”

_“Go west.”_

“Your west, or a normal person’s west?”

 _“Funny.”_ Rufus says, his voice dripping sarcasm.

Lucy splits off down an alleyway, and Wyatt finally understands. Box him in. Three Killjoys are significantly more terrifying than just one. 

Both he and Enzo round the corner, to where Rufus stands, gun out and pointed steadily at Enzo’s chest. “Welcome to plan C, bitch.”

Enzo puts his hands up, horrified. “No. No. _No_ , I can't do another set in West Hole.”

“Oh, I hear you, man. But you kind of, uh, how do I say this, chopped up your foreman?” Rufus quips. Lucy’s mouth twitches like she wants to laugh. “People frown at that.”

“Nowhere else to go.” Lucy warns, gun trained steadily at Enzo’s head.

“Except up.” Enzo says. Oh, look. He used a brain cell. “So long, shitstacks.”

He takes a running leap at the fence, and begins scrambling upwards. Lucy’s eyes go wide in alarm. “Oh, no, don't do that.”

“Fuck this, I'm taking him out.” Wyatt goes for his gun, but Lucy grabs his hand before he can.

“Stop! That's a security fence. It’ll arc back.” She drags him backwards a little, and the crowd follows. “Move. Wyatt, _move_.”

Enzo reaches the top of the fence, and promptly explodes. 

Everyone stares at the puddle of Enzo’s remains, silent for a moment.

“Level Four warrants are ‘alive or dead’, right?” Wyatt asks.

“Yeah.” Lucy and Rufus respond in perfect unison.

“Dead it is, I guess.”

Lucy’s PDD beeps, and she grabs it from her back pocket. “Denise again… third time this morning. We’re bringing him in. Someone get a shovel.”

  
  


**The Bazaar - Leith - The Quad**

No matter how many times Wyatt goes to Leith, he’s always taken aback. Leith is, to put it simply, _beautiful_. It’s all fields, bustling villages and scenery, and when you’ve grown up on Telen - a desert planet that has silica rain storms that will literally strip the flesh from your bones on contact - it’s a culture shock to say the least. They enter the Bazaar, and he can feel himself making what Lucy has coined his ‘Excited Puppy Face’. 

(Not that he knows what a puppy is, but she says it with a twinkle in her eye, so it can’t be a bad thing.)

It’s bright here, the sun filtering through the clear roof and making rainbows on the floor; the stalls are quaint, the people friendly but loud, and the orange and yellow of the Scarback’s robes stands out against all the brown wood and green plants. Even still, he sees the coldness of it, too - the metal counters of the poorer merchants, the guns carefully hidden away from the casual observer’s eyes - as they walk, he’s fairly sure he sees at least three drug deals of the illegal kind and one armed robbery. Lucy shimmies her way between two stalls, cutting through a large group of independent traders. Wyatt guesses that she, too, can tell they have sticky fingers. 

Eventually, they round the corner to a stall simply called ‘Warrant Broker’. Genuine, antique wood counters and thick, beaded curtains line the entrance. A moment later, Denise Christopher, ex-Killjoy legend and current Warrant Broker, emerges. She’s severe, all dark hair and eyes and exquisitely tailored clothes, but the way she smiles at Lucy is soft, almost gentle.

“Finally. I’ve been calling all day.”

Lucy returns the smile. “We got the mark like we always do.” 

“Took some doing.” Rufus quips, leaning against a pillar. 

Wyatt glares at him, and hauls the baggie of liquidized human onto the counter. “Enzo Galang, as promised.”

Denise’s eyebrow raises. 

“As promised… ma’am.”

“Congratulations. You're getting Enzo all over my desk.”

Rufus snorts. Wyatt glares at him, but there’s no heat to it, and Rufus shrugs at him as if to say _what do you want from me?_

Denise shoots them a look, and then turns to Lucy _._ “Lucy, you've got another Warrant.”

“Denise, I'm still _wearing_ my last Warrant,” Lucy complains.

“It comes from the Nine.” 

“I don’t do requests, you know that. _Especially_ not from the Nine. We’re volunteer only.” Lucy follows Denise into her office. 

Wyatt and Rufus, after a moment, follow them. The office is smaller than it looks, but the colours are soft, warm; the seats are covered in expensive-looking woven blankets and cushions, the walls are draped in intricately embroidered tapestries and curtains and the centre of the room is occupied by a large, dark wood table inlaid with metallic carvings. It’s the kind of room you wouldn’t find anywhere else in the Quad - too expensive for Westerley, not expensive enough for Qresh.

“I’d say you’re being volun-told.” Denise mutters, accepting a tray of tea from somewhere. She hands it to Lucy, who looks bewildered.

“I'm not changing my mind. The Nine are a bunch of inbred fascist nobles who think that just because they run the Company, they run the Quad.” Lucy pauses for a moment, and smells the air. “Is that… Kefree tea? And whose perfume am I smelling?”

“Forgive me, I may have sprayed it on a bit thick. My sense of smell's a tad... inbred.”

One of the many curtains has been pulled aside, and the woman that has emerged is both terrifying and impressive. Long, impeccably curled red hair, the latest Qreshi fashion in the deep grey and forest green of her family colours, and an elegant, poised gait. She barely registers Denise, outright ignores Rufus and Wyatt, and skims over Wyatt’s bag of Enzo. Her eyes only stop when they reach Lucy, and then her face turns sharp.

Lucy blinks, and breaks out her Appease Rich People smile. “Emma Seyah Keynes, of Land Keynes. An honor.”

Seyah Keynes doesn’t look like she returns the sentiment. She and Lucy consider each other for a moment, before they slide into opposite chairs. Lucy lays the tea set out between them. 

“This broker assures me you are the best female Killjoy.”

Lucy’s eyebrow arches, and her back straightens as she does whatever she’s doing. Wyatt’s never understood it, no matter how many times Lucy tries to explain the historical importance of Qreshi tea ceremonies. The youngest, or the one honoured with the least amount of titles, always pours for the eldest, or most honoured. The Nine should never pour their own drinks.

“I am the best. Period.”

Seyah Keynes deigns to look amused, and accepts the cup that Lucy offers with a dainty hand. “I certainly hope so. I require your assistance.”

“And why would one of the Nine Families of Qresh come directly to us lowly Reclamation Agents?” Lucy’s own cup is held delicately over it’s little plate. She takes a genteel sip.

“To prevent a war.” Seyah Keynes shoots back. “Someone has been allowed to run rampant over Company property for too long. He must be stopped.”

“And are your own men incapable of doing so?”

Rufus is now playing the “Can An Invisible Man Be Ignored” game, and seems to be winning spectacularly.

“He is a Westerlyn by marriage.” Is all Seyah Keynes replies, but Lucy seems to understand. 

“With the growing tensions between Westerlyns and Qreshis, you need someone impartial and efficient, so you came to the RAC.” Lucy says, nodding. “A bold move, if it were discovered. Why the sudden urgency?”

“My motives are unimportant. Find him. Incarcerate him. You will find that he is more than deserving.” Seyah Keynes sets her teacup down, and stands. “I have other, more important matters to attend to.”

“Of course, Seyah Keynes. Praise the trees, this will be over soon.”

“See that it is.” She murmurs, imperious, and stalks out of the office.

The second Seyah Keynes leaves, everyone lets out a long breath. Wyatt’s astounded - he’s never seen Lucy so poised, so elegant, almost dainty. It’s a whole side of his teammate he never knew existed. 

Then Lucy groans, and the spell is broken. She slouches in the chair as far as she can, puts her feet on the table, and downs the rest of her tea. She pours another cup, adds some Hokk from her hip flask, downs that too, and then Denise and Lucy have a silent exchange that Wyatt really doesn’t want to decipher.

Lucy stands and sighs. “Let’s go.”

“Sometimes I hate being space police.” Rufus says.

Wyatt can’t help but agree.

**The Lifeboat - Leith - The Quad**

The Lifeboat itself is almost clinical, all metal and rivets and angled lines. There’s little they can do - she’s a refurbished Class Six ex-military medic ship. The refurbishment guys managed to fit a large holding bay, a few small bedrooms, a kitchen, a common area, and a cockpit. She’s built to last, to be quick and agile so she can slip around other, larger ships in a medevac situation. She’s not built to look pretty.

It’s not that they don’t try. Lucy’s set her horrific pottery skills to work in making them plates and bowls and mugs when she’s not getting them horribly difficult Apprehension Warrants that no-one else wants. Wyatt keeps finding mismatched blankets and cushions for the common area, and seems to like buying candles from a probably illegal stall in Old Town. Rufus makes sure she’s clean and in working order. It’s a group effort. 

To Rufus? She’s home. 

“Okay, so. The Warrant’s finally come through. We are looking for…” Lucy gestures to Rufus..

Rufus obliges her with a drum roll.

“Garcia Flynn!” Lucy continues, projecting his ID photo onto the wall. They all pause - he’s handsome, Rufus has to admit, in a dark, dangerous way. Totally not Rufus’ type, but Wyatt’s mouth is practically on the floor. Lucy, in turn, looks like she wants to devour him, dangerous criminal or otherwise. 

She shakes her head, as if trying to clear it, and barrels on. 

“He’s wanted across the Quad for…” She clears her throat. “For murder. The murder of his wife and child.”

“Jesus,” Wyatt looks like he’s just been force-fed a lemon. 

“He’s ex-military. Married his wife Lorena a few years ago. Had their kid not too long after that.” Rufus recites. “Apparently, he went off the rails and killed them both - the kid, Iris, was about six years old. Escaped before they could take him to West Hole. That’s all they’ve given us.”

“That’s it? Keynes said he’s been giving the Company some real trouble.” Lucy muses. “Let’s do some more digging, see if we can’t figure him out. Rufus, can you try to find him?”

“Sure thing, Luce.”

“Thanks. Wyatt, can you set us on a course for Westerley?”

“On it.” Wyatt’s up the ladders to the cockpit in a flash.

Rufus absorbs himself in the research. At some point, a bowl of soup and noodles appears at his elbow, and he mutters his thanks. Wyatt’s not really much of a cook, but he’s had extensive military training in heating up ration packets safely. The noodles warm him up properly as he works. Wyatt comes in and out periodically to fetch tools, charge release screws, and oil. Probably gun cleaning night. 

At some point, Rufus migrates to the kitchen - presumably for coffee - and he’s not sure how long he’s there. He must fall asleep at some point too, because he’s woken by something being gently placed near him, the feeling of one of Wyatt’s awful blankets around his shoulders, and the smell of coffee. He peels his face from the table, the blanket sliding off his shoulders as he stretches. 

“Thanks.” 

She gives him a small, warm, genuine smile - a rarity these days - and leans against the counter. “I know it’s early, even by Westerley time, but we need to get this guy, and fast. Seyah Keynes isn’t going to like waiting.”

The electric hiss and hum of the door opening startles them both. Wyatt ambles into the room, looking rumpled and distinctly unhappy about existence. Wyatt grunts out a greeting, and Lucy hands him a cup of coffee. He blinks at it for a few moments, blinks at Lucy for a few more, pretends not to be blushing like a fire crab, and then collapses in the nearest chair. 

Rufus hums around his coffee cup, and they sit in silence for a while. It’s not awkward; Rufus gets out his PDD to chat with his mom, Lucy’s sat doing whatever she does in her journal, and Wyatt seems to still be dozing.

Eventually, Lucy jumps down from her perch on the counter. “So. Flynn. What do we have?” 

Rufus gestures for Wyatt to go first.

“None of my Army contacts know anything about him, but we’re set to arrive in Old Town in a few hours and all the guns are clean.” Wyatt replies. He pauses. “I think some of the firing pins are bent in the older pistols, but I can get a better look when we’ve caught Flynn.”

“You seem mighty confident about that, buddy.” Rufus says. 

“About fixing the guns, or catching Flynn?”

“Yeah.”

They both snort, and Lucy tries to pretend she’s not laughing too. “We’re going to do both. Rufus, did you find anything?”

“Yeah. Flynn served in a few revolutions on Dalmatia, then joined up with the United Republic’s forces. Met his wife Lorena there - they served together. She was a translator, he was Spec Ops. They married about ten years ago. They were living in Old Town when he killed them both, and he’s been going by the name Austin Roe ever since. I’m still looking for more background.”

“That’s good.” Wyatt says. “At least we have a starting place, right?”

Rufus can’t help but feel smug. They both look at him expectantly. 

“We have more than that,” Rufus says. “I know _exactly_ where he is. Lifeboat, hit us.”

 _“I cannot hit you, Rufus.”_ The Lifeboat says.

“I know.”

_“It goes against protocol.”_

“I know.”

_“I am also a spaceship.”_

“I _know._ Just… tell us about Flynn’s location, will you?” 

_“The Warrant target Garcia Flynn has been located on the cruiser ship Arcturus. It is currently en route to Ataxia, and will stop at Dalmatia on it’s journey.”_

Wyatt whistles, low and long. “That’s a slaver ship. Indentured fighting. Nasty stuff.”

“And Dalmatia is Flynn’s home planet. The R.A.C. have no jurisdiction there, not yet. It’s a smart choice.” Rufus says, and Lucy hums in agreement. 

“We need to get him before he gets there.” She muses. “Lifeboat, set a course for the Arcturus.”

_“Of course, Lucy.”_

“How do you wanna do this?” Rufus says.

Wyatt grins. “I have an idea.”

  
  


**Slaver Ship Arcturus - En Route to Ataxia - Deep Space**

_“Docking matrix activated.”_ The Lifeboat announces over the comms. Wyatt tries not to react. 

“All right, listen up. Our circuit takes us up and down the J star cluster. When you are done working off your fare, we can drop you off at any of the systems along our route. Until then, we own you.” The guard is, for lack of a better word, big. Muscular. Everyone in their little group of prisoners can tell that he is not someone to be fucked with, even the hulking great behemoth to Wyatt’s left.

“No way out,” someone mutters.

“Yeah, no shit. It’s called a slaver ship for a reason, jakkhole,” says someone else.

The guard ignores them, and continues. “Every fight you win goes towards paying your fare. The further you want to travel, the more you've got to pay off. The more you've got to pay off, the more you've got to fight. Fan favorites get more matches, so let's try to look pretty out there. You want a great example? Watch and learn.”

The group turn to watch. The fight going on in the electrically-fenced cage is equal parts brutality and performance - a ballet of broken bones and bloodied knuckles. Flynn and his opponent are equally matched in size, but Flynn is efficient and merciless, landing hit after hit after hit. Flynn’s opponent spits out what looks like a few of his teeth.

Wyatt sidles up to the guard. “Listen, what would it cost me to pick my first match?”

“Depends.” The guard replies, pretending not to be intrigued. “Who you got in mind?”

Wyatt points to where Flynn has just broken his opponent’s jaw. The crowd is screaming in approval. “Him. Austin Roe.”

“Oh.” The guard looks at him, then at Flynn, and then at him again. The grin that spreads across his face is both pitying and assessing. “Oh, this one's on me.”

The guard laughs once, pats him on the shoulder, and leaves. Wyatt’s stomach flip-flops as he’s escorted down a narrow hallway. It’s lined with the same stuff as the cage. Electrical fencing. Wyatt’s seen it before - you won’t die if you touch it, but it’s definitely going to sting.

 _“He’s big, but you’re fast.”_ Lucy murmurs, and he tries not to jump. 

He’d almost forgotten he was on comms, but Lucy’s there, the voice in his ear. She’s going to be telling him the plays, Flynn’s tells, both of their weaknesses, their fighting patterns. Her eye for this sort of thing is unmatched, even amongst soldiers and other Killjoys. 

_“He doesn’t know how much you can take. Fake him out if you have to. Qreshi bicycle.”_

_What the fuck is a Qreshi bicycle?_ he thinks.

“Yes ma’am,” is what he says.

Wyatt enters the cage. 

Flynn really is big. He’s a solid head above Wyatt, broad and muscular, handsome in a dark, brooding sort of way. He stands like he’s been fighting his entire life, like this entire situation is normal, like breaking someone’s jaw is second nature. Wyatt’s spine zings with adrenaline. 

The opening in the cage fuses shut. There’s nowhere to go.

_“Comlink deactivated.”_

Wait, what?

It’s like time stops - his breath pauses, Lucy’s head shoots up, Flynn wipes the little trickle of blood and sweat from his temple.

He was supposed to have backup. He was supposed to, but he’s been through a lot worse with a lot less. He’ll get through it.

Lucy’s circled around so they can make eye contact. He raises an eyebrow, but meets her eyes steadily. Tries to project confidence. _I can do this._

Lucy frowns at him, eyes probing. He can almost hear her: _are you sure?_

He fights, Lucy leads, Rufus gives a shit. That’s how they work. 

He nods. _Of course._

She lets out a quick breath and nods back, her mouth moving, but he’s too hazy to read her lips. She’s given the go ahead. That’s what matters. Everything is fine.

He’s on his own for now. 

The whole exchange only takes a few seconds, but it’s enough for Flynn to recuperate. The crowd is yelling. It pushes at Wyatt’s eardrums.

“Austin Roe.” Flynn says. His voice is deep, rich, accented, like lava down Wyatt’s back.

Wyatt panics. “Jessie Moore. Nice to meet you.”

They eye each other.

Flynn lunges first.

He fights Wyatt with the same brutal efficiency as his last opponent - single-minded focus, clearly able to spot every single one of Wyatt’s weaknesses and fully prepared to exploit them. Wyatt is, admittedly, having a hard time keeping up.

Lucy was right, as usual. Flynn’s huge, practically a wall of muscle, and okay, sure. He’s a little out of his depth. Wyatt hasn’t had to dodge this many punches since he ran away from home, and Flynn’s clearly been doing this a lot, and doing it well. 

Wyatt dodges an elbow to the face and gets a fist in his stomach for his troubles. 

“C’mon, shortstack, can’t keep up?” Flynn says, and Wyatt laughs. 

“Not my fault you’re eight feet tall,” is all Wyatt can think to say. 

Flynn’s grin is sharp, teasing. “Well, you know what they say about a big man.”

“He’s got a big ego?” 

Flynn laughs like he wasn’t expecting to, low and delighted, and then they’re fighting again. 

He’s trying to keep up with where Lucy is - she’s circling the ring, watching his every move, but he loses her more than he’d like to. She disappears for a long, terrifying moment, and then he finds her talking to someone in the upper stands. Flynn catches him in the jaw for that one, and he goes down hard. 

“Look, Moore, I’m trying to help you here.” Flynn says.

Wyatt just groans, and spits blood out onto the mat. No teeth yet, thank God. “Doesn’t feel like it, Roe.”

“It’s not that. The good fighters? They never let them go. They just invent more and more debts until they’ve got you. Permanently.”

“And have they?” Wyatt says, forcing himself up off the floor. “Got you, I mean?”

Flynn doesn’t answer. They’re circling each other now. The crowd are still screaming - if they could push at the fence, they would be. They’re matching Wyatt’s heart rate, thunderously loud, almost frantic. 

They lunge again, and again and again, and suddenly Wyatt’s pinned under Flynn’s bulk.

And then:

_“Comlink reactivated.”_

Wyatt contorts his entire body, and then he’s on top. Ha.

 _“Thank the Trees.”_ Lucy’s voice is like cold water in the desert. _“Wyatt, you hear me? Out of the pit. We got another agent on the target. Play time's over.”_

“I'm working on it! Stay down!”

Flynn does not, in fact, stay down. He flips them again, and Wyatt’s back is to Flynn’s chest. Flynn’s got Wyatt’s neck in the crook of his elbow, applying steady pressure. Wyatt’s already seeing stars.

“You stay down,” Flynn growls.

“I’m. Helping. You!” Wyatt chokes out, scrambling for purchase. 

“Of course you are, pretty boy.”

Wyatt flips them again, a little too forcefully. Flynn ricochets into the fence. A small knife embeds itself into the mat. Wyatt finally gets his footing, and Flynn follows barely a moment later.

 _“Oh, for shit’s sake,”_ Lucy says, and then Flynn’s on the ground, out cold.

The entire crowd goes silent. A small projectile has stuck itself into Flynn’s neck. 

Wyatt cheers, and the crowd follows.

_“Open the gate. Now.”_

_“You can’t come in, doll,”_ the guard says. “ _What did I just tell you?”_

A rookie mistake.

_“Projectiles are physical contact, and physical contact means he is mine. Or do you want to explain to the RAC why you're obstructing their warrant?”_

He smells her before he sees her. Flowers amongst sweat and blood.

“Give me a hand, Wyatt. I hit him with a neuroblock.” 

“Can we at least tell him that I knocked him out?” He says. Lucy glares at him, and he holds his hands up in surrender. “Okay, Okay.”

**The Lifeboat - Westerley - The Quad**

Up close, Flynn is just as big as he looks on camera. Wyatt’s concussed grumblings about ‘walls of muscle’ were correct - he’s huge, and dangerous, and can pick his way out of handcuffs with only a stray hairpin. He’s sat down, open cuffs off to the side, glaring at them as they go back into the cargo hold.

“Who are you.” Flynn growls upon seeing them.

“I’m Lucy, this is Rufus.” Lucy replies, looking bored. “You’re on our ship.” 

If looks could kill, they’d both be piles of goo on the cargo hold floor. 

Lucy steps up to Flynn. He’s sat down, and she’s only just taller than him. 

“Garcia Flynn, in the name of the R.A.C., you have been officially locked and served.”

Rufus _almost_ doesn’t see it coming.

Flynn moves fast, standing up quickly enough that he’s a blur, attempting a perfect uppercut that should have Lucy out cold. Instead, she dodges it even faster, ducking under his arm and doing something complicated and probably very painful. 

To Flynn’s credit, he only makes a throaty grunt instead of an actual scream. Flynn is slammed, face-first, into a ladder that leads up to just outside the cockpit. 

Lucy’s got him before Rufus can even blink.

She has an iron grip on his wrist, twisting it behind him to just before the point of pain, her thumb resting on the pressure point. If she twisted even a little bit more, Flynn’s wrist would break. The other hand is holding one of her knives to where the renal vein should be. If she even nicks that vein with the knife, Flynn’s dead in seconds. Neither hand is actually pushing, not yet, but it’s a not-so-gentle reminder that this could go a lot worse for him.

“Here’s how this is going to go, stud.” Lucy mutters, rising onto her tiptoes, lips to Flynn’s ear. “We’re going to take you to prisoner transpo on Westerley. There are two options as to how that happens. I can leave you uncuffed, get you a drink, and we can have a nice, civil chat about what you did to piss off the Nine.”

“Or?”

“Or I can make you wish you’d never been born. It’s your choice.”

Flynn mumbles something, and then grunts in pain as Lucy’s hand twists the tiniest bit further. 

“What was that?”

“The first one.”

“Good choice,” she says, and steps back. She takes off her jacket, revealing a gun on each hip.

Flynn gets himself fully upright. He clearly thinks about trying to overpower them again, but Rufus sees it click. Lucy’s armed with however many knives and two guns _on her own ship._ That she just restrained and threatened a man twice her size without even batting an eyelid. 

Flynn relaxes, and Lucy’s knife snaps itself back into wherever it came from. 

Rufus lets out the breath he’d been holding. “C’mon. Kitchen’s this way.”

Rufus leads the way, with Lucy glaring daggers at Flynn’s back the entire time.

The kitchen, like the rest of the ship, is metallic and sparse, and Flynn is predictably unimpressed. Wyatt’s sat at the table, attempting to nap with his face in the crook of his elbow, his other hand wrapped loosely around a cup of coffee. He’s patched himself up pretty well, in all honesty, and there’s only the cut above his eyebrow that’s actually needed stitches. 

Rufus sits on the couch and Lucy goes straight for the Hokk, but Flynn’s paused in the doorway, glaring at Wyatt suspiciously. “Jessie Moore?”

Wyatt chooses this very moment to display his remarkable ability to go from zombie to fully functioning human in two seconds flat. He jumps up, swearing violently under his breath, and spills his coffee. 

“Wyatt Logan, actually.” Lucy replies for him, already opening her usual bottle of Hokk: a pale gold Shiro, sweet, crisp, and slightly dry. 

Flynn’s face turns stonier, if that’s even possible. “Didn’t I have you in a chokehold the last time we met?”

Rufus snorts. Wyatt glares at him, then at Flynn, blushes a furious crimson, and settles on looking at the spilled coffee in disappointment. “No.”

Lucy smothers a laugh too, then, and she’s already poured two glasses of the Hokk. She offers one to Flynn, who refuses, and shrugs. She downs the first glass, and starts in on the second, ignoring Rufus’ concerned stare.

“So that wasn’t you that I was beating up?”

“Did you know, Flynn,” Wyatt begins, voice hoarse from, yes, Flynn’s chokehold. Lucy sighs into her cup. “That the penalty on Westerley for a double murder is at least fifty years hard labour?”

“Fascinating. I didn’t kill them.”

“That’s what they all say.” Wyatt quips in a sing-song voice. Flynn turns to glare at him, full force, the kind that melts concrete, and Lucy watches them. 

Wyatt’s defensive. Red-faced, off-kilter, desperate like he’s just been tranquilised and he’s clawing to take the needle out of his neck. Flynn’s attitude is all false bravado, but his face is serious. Anguished. She can see, in his eyes, that he means it. He didn’t kill them. She tries to picture it, and gets a tight knot of _wrongwrongwrong_ in her stomach for the trouble. 

“I believe you, Flynn,” she murmurs, and Rufus startles. 

“What?” 

She hesitates. Each word is halting, cautious. 

“We don’t know anything about what happened. We can’t know what happened because we weren’t there. We’re just following the guidelines of the Warrant: ‘apprehend the fugitive from law Garcia Flynn, dead or alive’. That’s all we’re doing.”

Wyatt scoffs, and shakes his head.

“We’re Killjoys, Wyatt. Take no sides, take no bribes, remember?” She turns to Flynn, then. “You may or may not have killed them. We don’t know. But _the Warrant is all._ That’s our tenet. That’s our code. Warrant says to apprehend you, we do it. Warrant says to kill you, we do it.”

Wyatt scoffs, then stalks out of the room, broken coffee cup left on the floor.

“We can’t abandon a Warrant.” She murmurs into the resounding silence. “What did you do to piss off the Nine?”

Flynn grimaces for a moment. “I don’t know.”

**_On the Lifeboat, they listen to Flynn’s story. Everyone is hesitant to believe him. They make plans to send Flynn to prison. He escapes their custody when they dock on Westerley, and leaves a note in Lucy’s room begging them to look into ‘Rittenhouse’._ **

**_Lucy is given a red box._ **

**_CHAPTER TWO - DOUBLE TIME_ **

**_Wyatt goes to see Jess, a bartender in Old Town._ ** **_Amy, the doctor, agrees to help if Wyatt will take her to Leith to get some supplies. Wyatt finds out that Amy has an interesting way to negotiate for medicine, injecting the shopkeeper with a virus and withholding the antidote until she gets the black-market medicine that she needs._ **

**_Lucy and Rufus meet with Noah, the leader of a religious order called Scarbacks. Noah also talks about the rumors of revolution around Westerley and the resistance movement against the Company. Lucy and Rufus then investigate Flynn’s house in Old Town._ **

**_Amy's diagnosis for Wyatt is Stress Response Syndrome. He tells her he learned she was banished from Qresh, and she responds that they both have secrets._ **

**_Jess spikes a Company officer’s drink to access his PDD and the Company records held within. Flynn meets with Jess. They agree that the team need to be brought onto their side, and when Jess reveals a top-secret incident at Prodigy, Flynn comes up with a plan._ **

**_Lucy receives a call - Rufus has hacked into Flynn’s PDD, and has a location. They land near the Badlands - queue expo - but are drugged and kidnapped before they can get to the location. (Ref - One Blood.)_ **

**CHAPTER THREE - THE FORGOTTEN SONS**

**Badlands Ranch - Westerley - The Quad**

Lucy is slammed back into consciousness by Wyatt’s probing, bare foot on her ankle, and the resulting agony of the nerve cuffs. She can’t help but match Wyatt’s pained yell with a gasp of her own - _come on, Yala, you’re better than this_ \- and the coughing fit that follows. Wyatt is dry heaving. 

Only the Badlands have air this foul. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Wyatt’s voice is a soft, desperate whisper. 

It’s pitch black, but they’re not blindfolded. Lucy can’t tell how big the room is, but she knows that they’re underground, they’ve been drugged, and that they’re all bound to chairs in a neat little row. 

“I’m sorry.” Wyatt repeats, shifting in his chair. He’s bigger than she is - which isn’t actually that difficult - and the strain from the cuffs must be doing a number on his arms and shoulders. She thinks she hears Rufus doing the same.

Between shallow breaths, she replies. “We can’t touch each other. Nerve cuffs. Rufus?”

Rufus groans unintelligibly from her left, and despite their clear sense of mortal peril, she laughs. They hear footsteps above them, and Rufus curses.

“That’s bad, right?” Wyatt complains, and Lucy has a sudden, extreme urge to elbow him at full-force, nerve cuffs be damned.

The thundering footsteps are getting louder.

“Very bad.” Rufus agrees. 

There’s a commotion outside the door, and someone bursts into the room in a ray of blinding light. 

It takes a moment for their eyes to adjust, but it’s him. It’s Flynn. 

She’s so angry she can’t form words.

Flynn doesn’t look as rough as they do, but he’s dusty and doing something with his face that could either be rage or constipation. He pauses, stares at them for a full minute, and then turns, mutters something in a language that sounds both familiar and not, and leaves.

They’re plunged into darkness again, and Lucy has to fight the claustrophobia clawing its way up her body. _Steady breaths, Yala,_ the voice in her mind says, and she flinches. It’s not real. It’s not real. 

“Uh. Either of you know what’s happening? Because I don’t really want to spend the rest of my life in a dark basement.” Rufus quips, an edge of panic to his voice.

“Same here. Any way to pick these cuffs?”

“Even if you do, we’re unarmed. There’s no point.”

Wyatt starts swearing under his breath. 

**_Flynn releases Lucy and Rufus to investigate a school-ship, to prove to them that Rittenhouse are the enemy. When they get there, the school is empty. They find empty cryo-pods in the classroom that end up containing the degraded remains of all of the children, and the rotting corpse of the teacher. The school detects them as intruders, and shuts down life support - Lucy races to turn it back on with biometrics while Rufus steals a heavily-encrypted transmission that seems to come from Qresh. (Ref - Schooled.)_ **

**_Flynn and Wyatt do what Flynn and Wyatt do. The ranch is raided by scavengers, and they fight their way out together, forging a bond. The team come to rescue them amidst a stand-off, and a tentative truce is formed. (Ref - Wyatt and Flynn’s past, Sugar Point, One Blood, Watergate, and Benedict Arnold.)_ **

**_Everyone decides to listen to Flynn for once._ ** **_Rittenhouse want to come out from the shadows and truly rule over the Quad, and will do so at any cost due to bloodthirsty new leadership. They agree to help him, though reluctantly. Lucy considers the future._ **

**The Lifeboat - Somewhere in Orbit - Westerley - The Quad**

The beeping of her PDD is what wakes her this time. She’s never been one to get calls, but now it seems that they never stop. 

_Incoming call from Emma Seyah Keynes,_ it flashes, and she scrambles out of the captain’s chair. 

“Lifeboat, transfer this call onto the main screen and activate the baby monitor.”

_“Transferred. The Baby Monitor Protocol is in effect.”_

If the Nine are calling her, she’s in shit. 

She scrapes her hair into some semblance of order, and answers the call.

“Seyah Keynes.” 

The smile that spreads across Seyah Keynes’ face is far too pleasant. It reminds Lucy of herself, of ice, of a crouching tiger, of vengeance. 

“Lucy. Say, do you wish to know of a report I just received?”

Lucy tries not to react. “I suppose that I have no choice in the matter, Seyah.”

“I heard a tale of a young female Killjoy causing havoc in the Badlands. Do you know who was with her?”

“I don’t, Seyah.” 

“A fugitive named Garcia Flynn. The story goes that the two of them, and their little team, disappeared onto a Class H ex-medic ship, codenamed Lifeboat.”

“Are you sure?” Lucy’s heart’s pounding. Somehow, they’ve managed to forget that they were in the Quad, _on Westerley,_ where even scavengers will report to someone in the Company if they’re paid enough. “There are many female Killjoys, and I’m certain that there’s more than one ex-medic ship with that name.”

“And are you aware of another incident? At a little ship called Prodigy?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Seyah Keynes’ face drops. “And I thought were were getting along so _well,_ princess. I don’t enjoy people who fail at their jobs.” 

“What’s to say I’m failing?” 

“You’ve displeased me. That says you’re failing.” Seyah Keynes hands her Hokk glass to someone off-screen. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

“Enlighten me, Seyah.”

“An upgrade, I think.” Her smile once again turns vicious. “Free of charge.”

Seyah Keynes hangs up, and Lucy is stood alone in the cockpit, a million questions unanswered. 

**CHAPTER FOUR - LEVEL FIVE**

**The Lifeboat - Somewhere in Orbit - Westerley - The Quad**

_An upgrade, I think. Free of charge._

The realisation dawns. 

She sprints to the kitchen, where she can hear all three of them laughing about something. Perfect timing as always, Seyah.

“Flynn!”

They’re already on a Level 4. Live or dead. Apprehension. Ten years hard labor, minimum. 

_An upgrade to the Warrant. Free of charge._

All their PDDs ding right as she skids into view.

Rufus slowly takes out his PDD, and looks. “God damn it.”

Wyatt leans over and looks. “God _damn_ it.”

_Upgrade the Warrant._

“Flynn.” She pants, heart beating wildly. “You have to leave.”

His face goes through a myriad of emotions in a split second, and then smooths out, a perfect, cocky mask. 

“Why, Lucy,” He murmurs, his tongue curling around the words. “I thought we had an agreement?”

“Flynn, it’s…” _It’s the universe falling apart around me. It’s every atom in my body telling me that you can’t die. That you mustn’t die._

Flynn looks at her, truly looks at her, and blinks. “What ‘s going on?”

Lucy has to lean against the table. “I got a call from Seyah _fucking_ Keynes. She’s not happy.”

Flynn looks between the three of them - Lucy desperate, Rufus grim, Wyatt resigned. 

“She upgraded the Warrant.” Wyatt murmurs. He sounds almost apologetic, looking up at Flynn through his eyelashes, and Flynn actually flinches.

“Shit,” Rufus hisses. 

“It’s a level five now, Flynn. A kill Warrant. You know what that means?”

Rufus groans. 

“We fake his death, right?” Wyatt tries. “Or say he got the drop on me and escaped.”

“That's not how this shit works and you know it,” Lucy says, both for his benefit and Flynn’s. “The RAC doesn’t just take your word on level 5s. There's inquests, proof-of-death. Once a kill warrant is written, it's guaranteed.”

“Meaning?” Flynn’s voice is just a hoarse as hers is. 

“If I don't terminate you by the warrant's end, they'll send another agent, and another, until it's done.”

“Well. Shit.”

They’re all silent for a moment. Short of Seyah Keynes actually coming to execute him personally, there’s only one course of action. But they have to try. There has to be a third option.

“Lifeboat? Take us to Leith. I need to talk to Denise.”

**Leith Bazaar**

“So. Where is he now?” Denise says.

“On the ship, with Wyatt and Rufus.”

“And Keynes saw you take him alive?”

Lucy nods, and takes another swig of Hokk. She almost misses the hand come to smack her upside the head.

“Ow! What the Hells, Denise?”

“You been sitting on your brains, girl?”

Lucy scoffs. “No, but I've got 21 hours before my warrant expires and I'm in breach. Just tell me how I can fix this.”

“You can put your big girl pants on and finish the damn warrant. It's not like you haven't killed on the job.”

“Self-defense is different. Trust me. If I can figure out something they want more than Flynn's death, maybe I can get them to null the warrant in trade. It's our only shot.”

**_Noah, a Scarback monk, meets with Lucy in Old Town and tells them who the Company's looking for - Rolly Desh, a Scarback/resistance fighter who stole something from the Company and they want it back._ **

**_The mission to find Rolly Desh takes them to a Qreshi Land Blessing ceremony. They spot Desh and start to go after him, just as someone grazes Lucy with a poisoned blade. She has Flynn and Rufus go after Desh while she tries to stop the poison in her body. The man that was tracking her on the slaver ship shows up and gives her an antidote for the poison. He knows her and she is afraid of him. Lucy passes out and flashes back to when she was a girl - the man trained her as an assassin._ **

**_Flynn and Rufus track down Rolly Desh, and while Rufus tries to talk him down, Flynn doesn't have time for talk and shoots him in the head. The boys retrieve the company information stolen by Desh, but get cornered by guards in a hallway. Lucy shows up and takes out the guards in spectacular fashion._ **

**_The Company accepts a trade, cancelling the warrant on Flynn for the information that they retrieved from Rolly Desh. The RAC calls Lucy in, because she defied the RAC code: "The warrant is all." She would normally be punished severely but an authority high in the RAC has cleared her of all charges._ **

  
  


**CHAPTER FIVE - CONFESSIONAL**

**_Approximately a while later, Flynn and the team have been working together. Rufus and the Lifeboat have finally decoded some of the transmission from the school, which refers to a cargo ship in an asteroid belt, and when they arrive, the team think they’ve hit the jackpot. On the ship, they split up and find they are not alone. They meet a man called Hogan, who was trapped here like them. Hogan and Wyatt agree to search the ship together._ **

**_The Lifeboat detaches from the ship, and is not responding. Rufus discovers that the cargo ship is military black ops, and that Hogan, who claimed to be a ship picker, was actually an original crew member. Wyatt is captured, and tortured by Hogan while everyone listens - the secret to Wyatt's nightmares is revealed._ **

“I get it,” Wyatt manages to grind out. It’s not hurting him anymore, but that doesn’t mean he can’t feel the possibilities - this tech could do anything to him, and then fix it right back up. Endlessly cycling through agony and healing. He’s not sure which is worse.

Hogan tilts his head. “Oh yeah? Get what, son?”

Wyatt takes a steadying breath. “Your ship. No cargo. No ID. You're not regular military. You're black ops. Enhanced interrogation. You're a torture unit.”

“Like I said, nice not to have to lie anymore. But you're the one with questions to answer.”

Nice try, asshole.

“So where's your crew?” Wyatt props himself up on the glass wall. “What happened? Come on. Soldier to soldier.”

Hogan considers this for a long moment. Then he sits down - they’re facing each other, like two grunts shooting the shit before a fight, and isn’t that ironic.

“Well, we were out on tour maybe six weeks when we ran through the path of a solar flare. Blew the engine right out. Started drifting. I got sent down to check the machine. That's when it _chose_ me.”

The intercom crackles to life. _“Prisoner 248-A.”_

“No! Wait, hold on.” He doesn’t know why he’s trying to bargain with a machine. It doesn’t work with people, why would it work with code?

Hogan continues like he didn’t hear anything. “First few weeks, you think well, bad luck. Next few, you think, but maybe there's a reason. But that doesn't matter now, son.”

_“Prisoner 248-A, detail your last mission.”_

Wyatt honestly, truly, doesn’t mean to gasp, but he does. He chokes a little on the blood still in his mouth.

No. He can’t.

Hogan locks onto it. “Are you scared?”

He doesn’t want to remember this.

“Fuck you!” He spits.

“It's okay. I was scared too. Always am, when I don't know what's going to happen.”

_“Prisoner 248-A, detail your last mission.”_

Stalling should work, right? 

“I know what's happening.” Hogan nods at him to continue. “You start with simple questions, then you get personal, looking for weak spots until you break them down.”

“That's right.” The bastard actually smiles at him. “So then you know there's no point in lying about anything, is there? Not unless you’ve got something to hide.”

Wyatt doesn’t know what his face does, but Hogan is suddenly very, very interested.

“Listen to me, son. I know you. Soldiers, warriors? We're the same.”

Is that salt he can taste? Wyatt doesn’t want to be crying. He doesn’t want to remember this. He doesn’t want to be here.

“Trust me,” Hogan murmurs, like the shittiest counsellor in the universe. “It's the only way. Tell me what you did.”

 _“Prisoner 248-A, detail your last mission,”_ the machine says. 

He doesn’t reply, just breathes past hiccuping sobs, and the computer almost sighs. Can machines feel disappointment?

_“Commencing persuasion. Lower abdominal region.”_

Wyatt thinks back to that time he ate rat stew. That was unpleasant. That was three days with a high fever and stomach cramps like nothing else he’s ever felt.

This? It’s pain like he’s never felt before. It’s worse than everything he’s ever felt put together. It’s every atom burning, itching, being torn apart and put back together at the same time, like a raging inferno, like a supernova under his skin. 

He’s screaming, he’s sure he’s screaming because his throat feels raw and his eyes are too blurry to see - it’s the worst thing he’s ever felt, and it’s not just the pain. 

“It was a recon!” He gasps, and the pain lessens, like a curious rat tilting its head. “Simple sweep and sensor. Me and my squad.”

It’s not just that the others are probably watching.

“There was nothing.”

It’s the memory. 

“Go on,” Hogan says, and Wyatt shakes his head, agony still thrumming in his veins. “You just started.”

It’s the lack of memory.

“I can't!”

It’s remembering what his hands did. 

“What do you mean?”

It’s remembering not being in control of what his hands did. 

“I mean I can't remember!”

It’s remembering the blankness, the horrible numbness of it all, feeling empty at the stickiness of the blood and the crunch of bone under his hands.

“I don't know what it was about or how it started!”

It’s the memory feeling everything and also nothing, all at once, when his own team were begging for their lives under his hands.

“Then what do you remember?” Hogan’s voice is still gentle. Still calm, like he’s seen this a thousand times. 

Wyatt screams as his muscles are ripped apart inside him. 

He doesn’t want to say it. He doesn’t want to say it. He doesn’t want to-

_“I killed them!”_

The pain stops abruptly, or maybe it just moves, and the lack of pain almost hurts in equal measure. He licks his lips and tastes salt and iron.

“I killed them,” he says. It’s barely a choked whisper, but following his echoing screams, it’s as clear as day.

He sobs into the ringing silence that follows. 

“What?”

“I killed them,” he repeats, louder, because the pain seems to be slowing the more he speaks, an ebbing tide, waves of agony that seem as inevitable as life itself.

_“Prisoner 248-A, please explain in detail who you killed and in what-”_

“My squad!”

Wyatt can’t help it. He sobs the words, because the pain was ramping up again, and he understands why Hogan went insane. He’d say anything, do anything, to get this to stop. 

_“Commencing reconstruction,”_ the machine announces, and he’s imagining that it sounds apologetic. He has to be. Machines don’t feel. Rufus told him that the Lifeboat is programmed to have emotion-like behaviors, but it doesn’t feel. 

He’s a machine. Why does he get to feel?

“Your own squad? Son... why?”

Wyatt licks his lips again. “I don't know. I just know what I did.”

_“Prisoner 248-A, what is your connection to Red 17?”_

**_Rufus takes all the data he can from the ship, and encounters a nasty AI. Lucy comes up with a plan to rescue Wyatt; she gets caught and breathes in the nanites. She taunts an impressed Hogan, by lying that she knows what Red 17 is and then blasting him with a directional charge, shattering the cage._ **

**_Flynn, who’d remained on the Lifeboat, manages to hook it back up, and pull the team in. They blow up the cargo ship so the torture/heal cycle will be stopped. After they’ve been decontaminated, Lucy is woken by Flynn from a nightmare about her old mentor, but refuses to talk much about it. She admits her sleep troubles, allows Flynn to comfort her, and falls asleep on him._ **

**CHAPTER SIX - THE RAIN**

**_The information Rufus discovered on the cargo ship is out of quarantine. It describes Red 17 as being on Arkyn. The team need a closer fix on the location, and Rufus sets the Lifeboat on the task._ **

**_Wyatt goes to see Amy. She tells him the nanites healed the scarring enough to see that he has memory/neuro blockers in his brain. Lucy sends Wyatt and Flynn to go to Leith to get supplies. They’re going to hit the base, and hard._ **

**_No sooner have Wyatt and Flynn left for Leith than there is a Black Rain alarm in Old Town. Jess offers a safe haven in her bar, and Lucy, Amy, Rufus, and Noah take advantage. In the Royale, Amy looks like she's going into withdrawal and Jess offers to make her tea since she can't venture out into the elements to get her fix. Rufus pulls Jess, Amy, and Noah out of the line of fire between an officer and a gang of thieves. The gang takes over the bar, but not before the leader is shot._ **

**_Meanwhile, outside, Company prisoners are being executed by the black rain._ **

**_On Leith, Wyatt and Flynn are basically on a date. They buy some food and medical supplies for Old Town, and donate to some Scarbacks. Back on the Lifeboat, they talk about Westerley, Lucy, the RAC, and the oncoming fight. They almost kiss, but are interrupted by the Lifeboat telling them that they’ve got a fix on the base._ **

**_Amy and Rufus start patching up the criminals' leader, but Amy's got the Jakk shakes. Lucy and Noah head to the underground tunnels to retrieve medical supplies and they manage to score some Jakk from a dealer, and on their way back to the Royale, the two get stopped by a Company Security Squad. Lucy convinces them to not storm the bar to rescue their officer and let her handle it. Amy confesses that the last time she operated high, she killed her patient. Rufus talks her through the drug effects and helps her perform the surgery. Downstairs in the bar, the criminals discover that the security officer activated his distress beacon and force him out into the black rain to die._ **

**_In Old Town, Lucy and Noah go out into the rain to retrieve the officer. Lucy also retrieves a nail gun used to fasten the prisoners in the rain, which she uses to shoot the bad guys in the head, saving the day. When they arrive, Wyatt and Flynn relay the news, and the team fly out._ **

**CHAPTER SEVEN - MIRROR, SWORD, AND SHIELD**

**_The team try to access Arkyn, and discover a man-made shield covering the moon. Very few people have the resources to create it, so they infer that it must be the Company._ **

**_The team have to go see Denise to inquire about the Connaver Gang, who are rumored to have been able to get onto Arkyn. They want whatever technology the gang used to get past the Arkyn shields, but they’re blocked for all the Warrants available. Denise tells them that the last known location of that tech was in a barter town called Eulogy, located on Westerley, where you can’t get in if you're not a known criminal possessing stolen goods. Rufus has the stolen goods and used to be a ship-thief, and it turns out that before Flynn’s warrant, he was a warlord in the Badlands. Between them, they smuggle Lucy in. Wyatt is left on the Lifeboat as overwatch._ **

**_In Eulogy, Lucy searches a secure storage area for the technology they need to get through the defensive shield. Rufus manages to connect the Lifeboat to the systems in the casino and disables them to help Lucy open a secure door. In the storage area Lucy finds Jiya, who has the device implanted inside her so she can guard it. Jiya is chained as she is the property of the Connaver Gang. Lucy offers to help her flee, and asks if she will help them get to Arkyn. The team and Jiya shoot their way out of Eulogy._ **

**_On the Lifeboat, Jiya eavesdrops on the team talking about Rittenhouse, and agrees to help them fight. She hits it off with Rufus, who offers to take her to a doctor and help remove her mods, but Jiya says they are a part of her and doesn’t want them removed._ **

**_Lucy, who is having continued sleep troubles, goes to Flynn’s room with her bottle of Hokk. Wyatt watches them, realises that they’re interested in each other, and becomes jealous - but he’s not sure who he’s jealous of._ **

**CHAPTER EIGHT - UTOPIA**

**_Lucy wakes up in Flynn’s room, and the two of them talk over coffee. It’s surprisingly intimate. They are interrupted when the Lifeboat announces they’ve once again reached Arkyn._ **

**_It is revealed that Jiya is injured every time she goes through the Arkyn shield, but she agrees to help them anyway. Rufus starts a project - he’s going to find the Factory and end it once and for all._ **

**_When they land, they discover an abandoned Red 17, guarded by robots. Jiya and Wyatt get stuck in a server room and extract all the information they can, and Jiya gives him some sound advice. Lucy, Rufus, and Flynn are captured by malfunctioning gynoids. Rufus made an app of the Lifeboat, and uses it to reprogram the bots in the nick of time. (Ref - I Love Lucy, Stranded.)_ **

**_They also find plans to place walls around all the towns on Westerly - the project is codenamed Utopia. They beat a hasty retreat and end up blowing up the base, courtesy of Flynn._ **

**_When the team returns to Westerley, Company security gets the jump on them. Without a warrant to back them up for ‘taking’ Jiya, Lucy, as team leader, gets hauled away to jail. Lucy gets a visitor - Emma Seyah Keynes of the Nine. She was behind Lucy getting locked up, and she wants to trade Lucy's freedom for a favor of her choosing. Lucy, knowing she has some leverage, asks Emma Seyah for the location of Dr. Jaeger, plus 24-hours alone with her._ **

**CHAPTER NINE - unnamed but would probably my favorite chapter**

**_Lucy is released and Dr Jaegar is found. She’s on a black site in Westerley. Dr Jaegar tells them that she remembers Wyatt, but says all she did was remove his memories at his request. Jaeger explains that he had a psychotic break in the line of duty. Wyatt asks Jaeger to give all his memories back to him, to reverse the treatment so that he can understand what happened. Lucy orders him to think this over, before entrusting Jaegar to Rufus and Jiya’s care._ **

**_Sequestered on the Lifeboat, Wyatt and Flynn talk, revealing their pasts and cementing their friendship. Wyatt and Flynn’s newfound closeness and emotional rawness leads, as it often can, to sex._ **

Flynn lunges for him, and Wyatt finds himself being kissed thoroughly.

It’s somehow both biting and gentle, an inferno and a balm, and Wyatt can’t help but melt into it. Flynn’s gripping his waist, Wyatt’s hands are braced on Flynn’s shoulders - _holy shit muscles holy shit_ \- and he’s drowning. He’s drowning but it’s okay, because Flynn’s slowly backing him up into his room. It smells of musk and sandalwood and _Flynn_ and Wyatt’s dizzy with the sensation.

Flynn spins them, and then collapses on the bed, their legs slotting together neatly. Wyatt’s on top, but Flynn is completely in control - Flynn stops them, just for a moment, just to take their shirts off.

“Fly-,” Wyatt attempts, and then Flynn’s mouth is once again sealed over Wyatt’s and he can’t really complain when he’s busy sucking on Flynn’s tongue. Flynn shifts underneath him. Wyatt’s hands migrate into Flynn’s hair, and he tugs on it a little, to get a better angle.

Flynn groans a little, his hips buck up to grind into Wyatt’s. The friction is almost too much, and Wyatt lets out a slightly pathetic whine. 

Flynn breaks away to wheeze out a little laugh. “What was _that_?”

Wyatt grumbles, and properly straddles Flynn’s hips. His hands tug on Flynn’s hair again, and Flynn obliges him with more deep, sucking kisses.

Wyatt’s definitely paying too much attention to what’s happening upstairs, because the hand on his ass makes him jump. 

They break apart. 

“Wh- why did you stop?” Wyatt knows that he sounds bratty, but he can’t help it. He needed to come, like, yesterday.

**_They fuck. Flynn leaves the room to get a drink. Wyatt gets a nosebleed, followed by a splitting headache, and his pupils dilate._ **

**_Lucy is working Jaegar for information. She confesses to knowledge of Rittenhouse and explains some of Red 17. Rufus is figuring out the tech with Jiya. It’s too late to stop the boulder rolling entirely, but they understand what she’s done, and while Rufus hacks the program, Lucy hurries for the Lifeboat._ **

**_Whatever Dr. Jaeger did before her arrest, its kicked in. When Flynn comes back to the room, Wyatt attacks him. After a brutal hand-to-hand fight, Flynn manages to knock out Wyatt._ **

**_When Lucy finds them, Flynn explains why Wyatt is chained up. He is understandably heartbroken, and Lucy takes the opportunity to clock Wyatt for hurting both her and Flynn, but nothing’s getting through._ **

**_Flynn corners Jaeger. Rufus manages to turn Wyatt off, then is convinced by Flynn to give Jaegar the memory wipe so she can't hurt anyone anymore. (Ref - Kiss Kiss Bye Bye.)_ **

**_Lucy tries to snap Wyatt out of it by telling him their story. Wyatt, ever the good soldier, stabs her in the gut and escapes. The Lifeboat, knowing Lucy's in trouble but not knowing how to help, goes into Emergency Protocol and transmits a distress signal. Amy answers Lucy's distress call and tries to save her sister's life. Amy puts a call in to the nearest Company medical ship and identifies herself: Dr. Illenore Seyah Preston, of Land Preston._ **

**CHAPTER TEN - THICKER THAN WATER**

**_Lucy is in surgery and doing well, with Amy, Rufus, and Jiya by her side. It is revealed that Wyatt missed all of the important organs, and barely nicked an artery. Wyatt has exiled himself to the Lifeboat, and washes the blood off the ship. He and Flynn talk._ **

**_A week later, Lucy is sick of their shit. She’s almost fully healed, and is sitting in the Royale complaining to Jess about how Wyatt and Flynn have failed to rebound from the aftermath of Wyatt being mind-controlled. She reveals a little of her own feelings, and Jess is exasperated. She gives Lucy some sound advice, and Lucy leaves._ **

**_She takes a shortcut down an alleyway, where she is cornered by her mentor, who forces her to come with him. Lucy and Khlyen have a tense meeting over tea. While in the Tea House, Khlyen engineers a poison gas attack, and tells Lucy to recover a package that a courier is carrying. He implants the neural link into her neck, so they can communicate, and shows her where her Killjoy mentor is. Since being disgraced, he’s resorted to stealing from Company ships. She needs to find the device on the stolen ship and bring it back to him._ **

**_By going off on her own, Wyatt thinks that Lucy no longer trusts him, and by extension the team. He and Rufus talk about what happened, but Flynn and Jiya think that Lucy’s been kidnapped. Her PDD says she’s on Leith._ **

**_Lucy finds the ship, but only the case for the device she's looking for and not the device itself. Lucy then finds Big Joe, and is happy to see him as he was her mentor as a Killjoy. Unfortunately Lucy and Joe are captured by a band of True Leithians, who think the Company and the RAC are coming to take their land and give it to Westerlyns. Held captive at the Kotler Family Compound, Joe tells Lucy he's been trying to thumb his nose at the Company by stealing from their most impenetrable targets. Lucy manages to reactivate her comms, and sends a distress signal._ **

**_The team try to get into the barn where Lucy is being held. The Leithians, who think the RAC is here to pave the way for relocated Westerlyns under the Seventh Generation Accord, are preparing for a major siege. One of the Leithians decides to use the mystery weapon that Joe stole. The weapon is a Genetic Bomb and it incinerates most of the Leithians. They escape._ **

**_Khlyen comes for Lucy and Joe, asking where the weapon is. She lies to him that the Company has it and he becomes upset and attacks them. In the process, he kills Joe and takes the device. The team catch up to her as she cradles Joe’s corpse._ **

**_Lucy comes clean to the boys about Khlyen. She grew up in a harem, and he was the guy training her. She relays her belief that Khlyen is Rittenhouse - maybe they can track him with the neurolink? He may be the key to getting rid of Rittenhouse and giving Lucy her life back. They plan._ **

**CHAPTER ELEVEN - LEVERAGE**

**_Wyatt has been working small solo warrants in Old Town with Flynn’s help and discovers Noah smuggling weapons. Later, in The Royale, Jess exposits the rumor that the Nine are threatening to renege on the Seventh Generation Accord and not allow Westerlyns to immigrate to Leith. Noah joins Wyatt in the bar as he wants to make sure he will keep his mouth shut about the weapons he saw._ **

**_On the Lifeboat, Rufus and Jiya come up with an experimental method to astral project to Khlyen's position via his neural signature and the neurolink. Lucy realizes Khlyen is on level 71 of the RAC, and has seriously troubling technology. Lucy and Rufus realize they need to do a covert op to get into the RAC, and Wyatt has the bright idea to tell the RAC that they've come to dissolve their team. Turin doesn't quite buy it, he suspects they're up to something. Wyatt confesses his attempt to kill Lucy and Flynn in order to get Turin to believe them, though this might get his Killjoy status revoked altogether. Turin agrees and dissolves the team._ **

**_As they leave Turin, Wyatt uses an electromagnetic pulse grenade he got from Noah’s weapons cache to knock out power, locks, and comm links in the RAC Cruiser. Lucy and Rufus split up and begin to make their way through the levels of the cruiser. Turin starts leaning on Wyatt for information about Lucy._ **

**_Lucy finds Khlyen, and they fight/talk._ **

**_Rufus finds a RAC supercomputer and takes all the files on Khlyen and Red 17. The Killjoys escape to the Lifeboat but can't fly away while the RAC is on lockdown. Lucy makes it to the ship in time to override the locks, and tells the boys to leave her behind. She gets shot by Turin, and placed in a rescue-pod by Khlyen._ **

**_Back in Old Town, Noah is arrested for orchestrating the Leith Bazaar Massacre. The Company security squad beats him, right in front of the Old Town people._ **

**CHAPTER TWELVE - UNDERGROUND, UNDERCOVER**

**_Noah has been arrested for allegedly planning the Leith Bazaar Massacre, and Lucy says they owe it to him to help, even if the rest of the team are more reluctant. Lucy needs Rufus and Jiya to decrypt Khlyen's files so they can figure out how to combat Rittenhouse._ **

**_The Company broadcasts Noah’s confession, which Lucy and Flynn assume must've been coerced, but all hell is breaking loose in Old Town. Curfew goes into effect. Lucy thinks what's happening to Noah and what Khlyen said about trouble coming to the Quad are connected. Bottom line: they have to save him. Lucy convinces Hills to let her visit Noah in jail. Lucy promises to help him save Westerley by getting the entry codes for the survival bunkers under Old Town. In Old Town, Lucy, Flynn, and Wyatt go undercover as monks into the underground tunnels. They ask the Rat King for the bunker codes for Noah, and are asked to prove their faith._ **

**_As Westerley descends into chaos upon the news that the Nine are going to vote to rescind their promise of Leith land to seventh-generation Westerlyns, Emma Seyah Keynes calls in Lucy's debt to her and requests her presence. Lucy has a choice to make - Rufus goes with her, as the others would only cause trouble. Flynn is told to get the evidence to Hills, and keep the codes safe._ **

**_Upon Lucy’s orders, Jiya and Wyatt head to the post-shootout Leith Bazaar and find Denise thankfully unharmed. They ask her what she's heard about Rittenhouse, but she's only heard tall tales; "gene-splicing, reanimation, crazy stuff," but no one has proof. They insist she comes with them, but she refuses. She has a wife and kids, and she can’t abandon them - Jiya offers to help her protect them instead, and she accepts. Wyatt, bless his soldier heart, joins them._ **

**_Emma Seyah receives Lucy and Rufus with a mixed reaction. She wants Lucy to be her security with the contentious vote today, as she's received death threats. In the Ancestral Hall of the Nine, Lucy spots someone carrying what she recognizes as the Genetic Bomb recovered from Leith a few weeks ago. She and Rufus chase the guy down, but the weapon gets loose, and Emma Seyah purposefully sets it off. Half the delegation at the assembly hall is vaporized instantly. Rufus chases down Emma Seyah, who tells him that it was Khlyen who insisted Lucy be on hand for this. She also alludes to what's coming to Old Town that night. Lucy chases down the bomber, who recognizes her as Khlyen's protégée, and is supernaturally strong. Rufus arrives just in time to help and Lucy kills the agent._ **

**_Aboard the Lifeboat and heading home, they learn that the Westerley resistance is being blamed for the assassinations on Qresh in supposed retaliation for Noah’s sentencing, giving the Company cover to rescind the Westerlyn immigration promise and crack down on Old Town, sending bombers to pummel the city. They get to Old Town just in time for the air raid sirens. They usher as many people as they can, including Amy and Jess, into the tunnels. Lucy and Noah, each leading a group of people, meet halfway - Noah is headed towards the bunkers, the team to the Lifeboat. Amy and Flynn decide to stay with Noah in the bunkers, since the rebels will need a doctor and a fighter. Lucy and Flynn share a moment - ref. Chinatown._ **

**_Lucy and company next run into Hills, who tries to detain them. Lucy unloads on him for framing Noah and giving the company an excuse to bomb them, though she soon realizes it was Hills who pulled the air raid alarm, giving people the chance to escape. He decides to let them go. Noah and company get inside the bunker just in time._ **

**CHAPTER THIRTEEN - RAPPROCHEMENT**

**_In orbit above Westerley, they get a call from Wyatt and Jiya, who are with Denise and her family. Lucy and Wyatt have an emotionally stunted reunion. Denise has had word from the Company via the RAC that Old Town has been sealed off after the bombing. Lucy and team demand a Warrant to get back inside with supplies._ **

**_It is agreed that Jiya needs to stay with Denise, as she is not considered a human under Company law._ ** **_Rufus gives Jiya something - a high-tech new arm that uses nanites. Jiya is unsure at first, but upon understanding that it’s a gift, not a demand, they share their first kiss. (Ref - Benedict Arnold, Chinatown, AoU, Coulson’s hand.)_ **

**_The team needs to go to the RAC to get the Warrant and reinstate Wyatt. Turin is not happy with them but reinstates Wyatt. He assigns them a warrant for the capture of eight prisoners in Old Town that have escaped Westhole Prison._ **

**_At the Containment Fence surrounding Old Town, the Killjoys are scanned and have their records projected on the barrier in front of them. The containment system recognizes the team as Killjoys, and they are detained in a company bio-dome just outside of Old Town by Jake Neville, a Company officer._ **

**_After a talk about loyalties, the team enters Old Town and works their way to The Royale, but someone called Dave has taken it over since Jess has been gone. Lucy offers to fight Dave for the bar in order to get it back for Jess. It also causes a distraction while Wyatt checks the rooms above the bar for Amy/Flynn and Rufus scans the room for any of the escaped prisoners. Lucy continues the fight until she finishes it quickly by breaking Dave’s leg. The prisoner shoots himself._ **

**_Jess arrives at the Royale, and the team heads to the prison to search for the remaining seven prisoners. They find six mummified corpses that used to be the prisoners in what is left of the prison after the bombing, as well as a prison guard. Carl, the prison guard, explains that when a company ship crashed into the prison and people started escaping, he followed protocol and hit the "red button". He figured it would just be tranquilizer gas. Instead, it instantly mummified everyone inside. Tighmon made it out, and he also escaped with weapons and a tank of the gas. The team grabs a corpse and heads out to find Amy to have her look at it._ **

**_They find Amy tending to the wounded in a makeshift medical facility. They show her the mummified corpse and she concludes that the toxin sucks all the moisture out of the body instantly. You'd have to swallow a lake to counteract the effects. She then takes them to Hills Oonan for more information. Amy's been keeping Hills hidden since anybody associated with the Company is hated in Old Town. He tells them the Company calls the gas the "Aridity Solution." He also mentions that Neville has a Company reputation for being a torture expert._ **

**_The team find Noah and he takes them to Tighmon, who he has known for a long time. There's a tense standoff, and Tighmon demands that Lucy convince the Company to let the other miners and their families go in exchange for the gas and Tighmon's surrender. Lucy promises to try, but before she can leave a Company drone guns Tighmon down._ **

**_Meanwhile, Hills tells Amy that he can help her contact her mother on Qresh if she's willing to ask for the Nine's help. He sets out to take Amy to the Spring Hill bio-dome._ **

**_Lucy contacts Jelco, very mad that the Company killed Tighmon before she could bring him in. She wants off Westerley and Jelco wants the tank of gas. She tells him to take his complaint to the RAC. Instead, Jelco broadcasts a message to Old Town, placing a bounty on both the tank and on Lucy's capture. Rufus discovers that Jelco's been tracking them all with chips, and they collect the trackers and get rid of them._ **

**_Jess stays in Old Town when the Team and Noah head through the tunnels below the city to an exit point at Spring Hill. Flynn breaks off to get Amy and meet them under the bio-dome._ **

**_Hills and Amy get to Spring Hill before the Killjoys. Jelco accuses Hills of being a traitor for warning Old Town before the bombing. Hills stands up for himself, but Jelco responds by shooting him in the head._ **

**_A tense stand-off between the Killjoys and Jelco reveals why he's presiding over Old Town: to crush the rebels to the point where they will come crawling back to the Company and teach the rest of the Quad the price of rebellion. As for Amy, she's a guest of the Company now. Whether she's staying under duress or not, Lucy gives her a kiss on the cheek goodbye and secretly leaves her with a comm link so she can contact them when needed._ **

**_Back at the Royale, Dave makes one last attempt to regain ownership of the bar. Jess offers him free drinks, free sexers, and money but he refuses, so Jess stabs him in the hand with his own knife._ **

**_Finally back on the Lifeboat, Lucy convinces Jiya to join them on their search for truth about Rittenhouse and the Company. Just as she agrees, the Lifeboat's navigation system gets taken over, and the ship touches down on Westerley. The Killjoys think its Keynes, but it turns out to be Turin, who tells them the RAC is not safe and has been taken over by Rittenhouse._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> something that i wish i could have used:
> 
> Wyatt’s chair scrapes as he sits back down. “So. Flynn. What’s it like, being a fugitive?”  
> “Shut up, Wyatt.” Rufus says mildly.


	3. Emotional Whiplash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> so basically i found this super duper old unfinished draft of this and it's,,,, so different. the characterisation is so bad. the plot is nonsensical. it's just,,, yikes.  
> so i'm putting it into the world. merry fuckin quarantine.  
> the working title was, indeed, Emotional Whiplash.  
> i haven't proof read this.  
> i'm so sorry in advance.

**Somewhere In Deep Space - The J Star Cluster**

“Lucy?” The smooth voice of their ship’s AI, Karl, sounded through the room. Wyatt awoke, swearing, and slammed his head against the ceiling. 

“Yeah, Karl? What is it?” Lucy was sat up on her bunk, the pieces of her rifle spread out around her.

“You said to tell you if there was an update. We’re nearing the Quad as we speak.” Karl sounded faintly amused by Wyatt’s pained mumbling. 

“Thanks. Let’s dock on Leith, near the Bazaar.”

“Activating docking matrix.” Karl still sounded incredibly satisfied, and Lucy rolled her eyes. He was remarkably characterful for an AI, and always had been. 

By the time Lucy had properly woken herself up, Wyatt was in the kitchen, nursing a beer and holding a bag of ice to his forehead. In the cool glow of their overhead lights, he looked even scruffier than usual, and she ruffled his already messy hair as she walked past. He grumbled in response, and she grinned, grabbed a peach from the fruit basket, and sat down on the opposite side of the table. 

For such an expensive ship, it was shockingly small. Only two bedrooms, one of which had needed to become an armory; the small living and dining area they were currently occupying; the cargo hold, which had barely enough room for their Rambler and the cargo doors; and the disproportionately large cockpit. Wyatt had made a joke about somebody ‘overcompensating’ when he’d joined her team, and she had to agree. Despite its size, it was incredibly fast - they’d made what could have been a whole week’s journey in just three days, most of which was spent just playing card games or cleaning their many, many guns. But they were finally coming  _ home.  _

(Well. She was.)

“Okay, Luce, can you like… run down the Quad for me? We were incredibly drunk the last time we talked about it.” Wyatt asked her, voice still rough with sleep. He was squinting slightly from under his ice-bag.

“Well…” Lucy began. “The Quad Planetary System - one planet, three moons. They’re all owned by the Company, a moderately tyrannical megacorp that terraformed the moons when land on Qresh got scarce.”

“Qresh is the planet?”

“Yeah. Basically, the rich people on Qresh are the Nine Families - they own the Company. The Company is responsible for terraforming the other moons. My old family, the Rinn, are one of the Families.” Lucy bit into her peach. Wyatt looked concerned.

“They’re like royalty then? And what about the moons?”

Lucy spoke through the food in her mouth. “Pretty much. Leith is where they went first. All the cousins and the, uh, poorer people, I guess - they were kind of shoved there. It’s nice, but it’s not Qresh.”

“Very ladylike, Luce.”

“Thanks.” Lucy rolled her eyes again, and stole his beer. Wyatt let out a very undignified squawk of indignation, and then stole it back after Lucy had taken a drink. “Basically, Arkyn went really, really wrong, and it’s no longer habitable. There’s rumours, of course, but no-one’s quite sure why.”

“And the other one?”

“Westerly. They basically ran it dry of everything, it’s now a bunch of mining colonies and the pissed off great-great-grandchildren of Leithian field-hands.It’s an industrial hell-hole.”

“Damn.” Wyatt looked mildly shocked. “And why are we going there?”

“Because we’ve been requested for a specific warrant, and we’re R.A.C. agents, so we go.” Lucy reprimanded gently, taking another bite of her peach. “And besides, it means we get to go to the Bazaar. Time for shopping, Wyatt!”

Wyatt let his head thump onto the table, and groaned. 

**The Bazaar - Leith - The Quad Planetary System**

Leith was surprisingly beautiful. It was all fields, villages and scenery, and when you’ve grown up on Telen - a planet that has silica rain storms that will literally strip the flesh from your bones on contact - it’s shocking, to say the least. Wyatt was definitely taking pictures for posterity. 

Lucy laughed when she saw him, wonder filling his eyes, and took him by the arm to drag him into the Bazaar. The Bazaar itself was fairly standard, just your regular middle-class market. They passed by medicine stores, peddlers of ‘rare’ antiques, even some strange monks suspending each other from hooks placed under their skin. Lucy inclined her head as she passed, seemingly out of respect, and dropped a few Joy in their collection tin. 

After they’d passed, Wyatt leaned down to her, and whispered: “What’s their deal?”

Lucy rolled her eyes. “They’re called Scarbacks.”

“No, really? Absolutely shocking, I’d never have guessed-,” Wyatt yelped as she smacked him on the arm. Rubbing his wound ruefully, he frowned. “No, but for real, what’s up with them? Why are they doing… that?”

“It’s kind of a Quad thing - they’re everywhere here, I think they started on Westerly. And they suspend and cut themselves as penance. It’s literally their pain for our redemption.”

“Really?” 

“Yes, really.” Lucy shimmied her way between two stalls, cutting through a large group of traders. Wyatt could tell they had sticky fingers. When they’d cut through the crowds, she continued. “It’s not so bad. They give people hope. And I’m friends with a few of their order, so be nice. They’re good people.”

Wyatt nodded, still checking their surroundings. It was bright here, the sun filtering through the clear roof and making rainbows on the floor; the stalls were quaint, the people friendly but loud, and the orange and yellow of the Scarback’s robes stood out against all the brown wood and green plants. Even still, he saw the coldness of it, too - the metal counters of the poorer merchants, the guns carefully hidden away from a casual observer’s eyes - as they walked, he was fairly sure he saw at least three drug deals and one armed robbery. No-one took notice. 

So much for law-abiding citizens. 

Eventually, after they’d stocked up on drinks and ammo, they rounded the corner to an old stall. Genuine, antique wood counters and beaded tapestries lined the entrance, and through the small gap in the curtain, he could see a woman preparing tea, a gun strapped to her thigh over her pant leg. They loitered outside for a few moments, waiting. Wyatt subtly checked that his own gun was loaded.

When the woman emerged, he was taken aback. She was small but strong in a way that reminded him of Lucy, even though they looked nothing alike. This woman was older but pretty, her petite features and dark hair standing out against her pale blue tunic and jacket. She and Lucy shared a similar essence, he could tell, even while this lady was analyzing him, her brown eyes calculating. Even so, she smiled and beckoned them inside, giving Lucy a warm pat on the back. Lucy smiled in return.

Her office was small - and felt even smaller, the seats covered in expensive-looking woven blankets and cushions, the walls draped in even more tapestries, smoky incense clouding the air slightly. The table was the largest feature - large, a dark wood inlaid with metallic carvings and, after a few taps and a voice command, the surface of the table became one of the biggest computer screens he’d ever seen. He couldn’t help but grin, taking a chair opposite the woman.

“So. You’re the Killjoys that they requested.” Her voice was warmer than Wyatt had expected, her tone pleased. 

Lucy nodded in response. “Yes. This is Wyatt. He’s a recent recruit, so we’ve been staying around Telen’s system for a while.”

The lady snorted, tapping on the computer screen in her desk. “Telen’s a shithole. But, judging by you two’s Warrant history, you’re now some of the best in the J.”

“The best. Period.” Wyatt fidgeted in response to Lucy’s declaration, and the lady sighed. 

“Look, I don’t know why the high-ups have requested you two, but you aren’t going to be working alone. There’s another team they want for this one too.”

“Double-booking? That’s got to be a clerical error.” Lucy leaned forward, urgency colouring her tone. “We work alone, that’s what I’ve _ always _ told them.”

“And yet, it’s the Nine. They get what they want. The other team, they want a meeting on neutral soil.” 

Lucy’s face paled slightly, but she held her ground. “Who in the Nine, Dhriti?”

“Doesn’t say. I’m only the Broker here.” The lady - Dhriti - leaned forward. “I’m sorry, Lucy. You know I’d have passed it on if there were any other way.”

“Yeah.” Lucy sighed. “Who is it for?”

“This is Emma Whitmore, a Company scientist working on some super-secret tech.” Dhriti spun the Warrant on the screen so it faced them. The computer lit up with surveillance video of someone Wyatt could only describe as ‘beautiful and terrifying’ climbing into a ship not dissimilar to their own, and then promptly disappearing. Lucy replayed it, hunching over the footage as if to memorise it.

“What?” Wyatt spoke for the first time. “Is that cloaking tech? That’s not even possible!”

“Perhaps not where you’re from.” Dhriti said, not unkindly. “But here, it’s not only possible, but also incredibly expensive, and equally sought after. The ship she stole is worth over five hundred  _ thousand  _ Joy.”

Wyatt whistled, low and impressed. “She’s got balls.”

“Yeah, and I bet they chafe when she walks.” Lucy quipped, still leant over the screen, and Wyatt grinned. “So it’s a Level Three warrant, then - The Nine want their ship back and her arrested.”

“No.” Dhriti corrected, clearly losing her patience. “This is a Level Five Warrant.”

Lucy’s head shot up. 

Wyatt’s smile turned grim. 

“They want her dead.”

**Old Town - Westerly - The Quad Planetary System**

They’d had to agree to it. Whitmore had stolen high-value Company tech; none of them really had a choice about accepting the Warrant. Even then, despite it not being their first rodeo with a kill Warrant, they felt nervous, almost anxious. Worried about what they’d find waiting for them. 

First, however, came tracking her, and even though they’d been given a  _ generous _ week to finish the job they needed to get started as quickly as they could. The coordinates that Dhriti had given them for their fellow agents were for a bar in Old Town called the Royale.

The Royale could have been grand, if it wasn’t old, run-down, poorly lit, and incredibly cheap. She was drinking bad Hokk, Wyatt decided on an algae brew before wandering off to talk to the locals, and eventually Lucy found herself chatting to the bartender. And by chatting, she meant flirting - the woman, Josephine, was gorgeous. Beaded dress and heeled boots, close-cropped curly hair, immaculate makeup, at least three weapons concealed, and almost definitely someone that Lucy could go home with. That is, if ‘home’ wasn’t a tiny ship with an even tinier bed. 

Eventually, she was interrupted by a ding from her PDD and Wyatt gesturing at her, and she went over to where he was standing with three people wearing Killjoy insignia. Their new teammates. Lucy couldn’t help but assess them as she walked over; two men and a woman, all of them taller than her. She’d seen them before, with all the time she spent on Westerly and at other Killjoys things. They’d potentially be difficult to overpower - all of them muscular, and standing like soldiers, like they knew exactly how good they were. 

The first man introduced himself as Rufus Carlin, I’m The Mechanic - he still had engine grease on his hands, his jacket stained with oil. The woman, Jiya Marri, was clearly the leader. The casual, confident way she held herself spoke volumes when contrasted with both of her teammate’s cautious movements - Lucy could see Wyatt trying to clock all their weapons. The tallest of them was introduced only as ‘Flynn’, and he was possibly one of the most handsome people Lucy had ever seen. She took him as a recent recruit, possibly ex-military from his sheer amount of muscle mass, even if he was trying to disguise it with a loose, flowing shirt and scruffy half-beard. She wanted to climb him.

(Wyatt looked like he was either going to punch or kiss Flynn, but Lucy tucked that away for later.)

Upon Lucy’s request, the group reluctantly took a seat near the back, out of sight. A few uncomfortable looks were exchanged between the five of them. Wyatt finally relented when the silence dragged out too long. 

“Do any of you want a drink?”

Rufus and Jiya responded with terse ‘no’s. Flynn just glared at him. Wyatt looked at Lucy, uncertain, and she sighed. 

“Look, I know none of us want to share this Warrant, but we have to. We’ve all signed on. We’re all stuck here.”

“Easy for you to say.” Flynn almost growled the words, his tone bitter and acerbic. 

“He’s grumpy, but he’s right. We don’t have a working ship, unlike you guys. Rufus has been trying to fix it for weeks.” Jiya placed a calming hand on Flynn’s arm as she spoke, but it was shrugged off. They spent a moment staring at each other, seemingly communicating, and Lucy and Wyatt exchanged a glance. Apparently, ‘grumpy’ meant ‘homicidally angry’ to these people.

Rufus sighed, and butted in. “We’ve had a long week, and I’m tired. We need to figure out where Whitmore’s headed. I have some tech that might help.”

Lucy nodded, and then spent twenty minutes listening to Rufus and Wyatt go back and forth about the ship and Quad politics, while she and Jiya dissected the security video. Flynn didn’t really say much, but he grunted in approval whenever Rufus or Jiya made a good point, and glared at Wyatt whenever he said… well, anything, really.

It was barely noon when they finished, but they all decided to disband, and meet again in the morning. Flynn walked out of the bar after only a few minutes, claiming he had business to attend to; Jiya and Rufus said they were sharing a room at the Royale, and disappeared not long after Flynn. 

Lucy stayed for a bit, too, chatting to the beautiful bartender. Josephine eventually gave her the hook - let her down easy, gently, with a rueful smile like she was used to fending off prospective partners. Lucy just shrugged, sympathetic but unrepentant, and found a pretty blonde sexer in the rooms upstairs. He was tall, muscular and handsome, and she was ready to take him apart.

Wyatt, sat at the other side of the bar, was thinking. He wasn’t sure how he should feel about these new people - his time in the military gave him conflicting feelings. Should he trust them because they’re his teammates? He’s depending on them, they’re the other people in the foxhole, they need to have his back or none of them will get paid. On the other hand, they’re new - he’s never even heard of them before, he doesn’t know them, they don’t know him. They’re unprecedented variables, and if there’s anything Wyatt doesn’t like, it’s variables. 

He rubbed a hand over his face, suddenly exhausted. He sighed into his cup. 

They’re in deep now. 

**Lucy and Wyatt’s Ship - Westerly - The Quad Planetary System**

It was two hours later that a very satisfied Lucy fetched Wyatt from his bartop perch, and they walked back to their ship in the dwindling afternoon light. Wyatt was a comforting shadow over her shoulder in these streets - they were dark and dangerous, even as well-trained Killjoys. When they did get back to the ship, Karl greeted them in his usual manner (a smarmy little “welcome home, Lucy”, to which Wyatt replied with an eye roll and a middle finger). This time, Lucy couldn’t help but laugh to herself as Wyatt dumped his rifle, grabbed a beer and went to their room, mumbling something about “damn Qreshi ships and their dumbass superiority complexes”.

“You know you’re only encouraging him, right? You realise he’s just a ship?” She called after him, a grin stretching over her face.

“You tell that to my ego!” Wyatt replied, grinning back, already getting out of his gear. 

Lucy continued chuckling to herself most of the night, but when she passed out, her sleep was light and unsatisfying. Eventually, when she’d had enough of pretending to rest, she got up, padding quietly to the cockpit in just her sleep shirt, her feet cold and bare on the metal floors. She settled into the captain’s chair, tucking her legs underneath her, and sighed. Her mind just didn’t stop sometimes.

Wyatt finally resurfaced an hour after she’d gotten up, and they shared a breakfast of beer and Leithian peaches. 

“Lucy?” Karl intoned, somehow sounding bored. “Incoming video call from your…  _ teammates. _ ”

Lucy looked up, confused. “Go ahead.”

If Karl could have sighed, she was sure he would be doing so right now. The feed came up, and she saw the three of them squashed into the small frame. 

“What’s up?” Wyatt asked them. Jiya raised her eyebrows at him, and Flynn rolled his eyes in the background. 

“What’s up is that we’ve found a trail. We think that before Whitmore went rogue, she might be working out of a bunker in the Badlands.” Jiya surmised. 

“What’s your source?” Lucy tilted her head, curious. Jiya visibly bristled. 

“A friend. Gossip gets around, especially amongst security guards.” Flynn interjected, a smug little grin resting on his face. It was the first time they’d really heard him speak, and Wyatt was taken aback - Flynn’s voice was gruff, slightly accented, and deeper than he’d anticipated. He felt a little thrill run down his spine.

Desperately trying to appear unaffected, he nodded. “As long as you believe them, that’s what counts. Still, we need information. Your… uh.  _ Friend.  _ Did they say anything about where she worked?” 

Flynn grinned even wider. “Spring Hill.”

Everyone but Wyatt let out a little sigh, and Lucy rubbed a hand over her face. “That’s just…  _ fantastic. _ ”

Her words were bitter.

“Yeah, right? She went rogue a while ago apparently. It’s just… I think that if we can get to Spring Hill, I can hack the computers there and get some more intel on her.” Rufus added. 

Lucy nodded, thoughtful. “We’re in orbit now, but give us an hour or two and we’ll meet you there.”

“Sounds good. Bring some food.” Rufus gave them a dorky little thumbs up as he spoke, and Jiya shut off the video feed without further comment. Wyatt snorted. Lucy looked over at him, huffing out a small laugh. 

“They’re really pushing the boundaries, huh?” Lucy mused, and Wyatt nodded in agreement. “We’ve barely got any food ourselves. Going to have to stop by a market.”

**Old Town - Westerly - The Quad Planetary System**

“So. Joy for your thoughts?” 

The back-alley was cool, damp, dimly lit, and smelled of something that Wyatt really didn’t want to identify. But they were Killjoys, and damn good ones at that - Lucy didn’t seem to care that this was one of the most dangerous routes to the market, and she took his arm as they strolled at an almost leisurely pace. Still, in the quiet, amidst the ominous dripping sounds and quiet snoring of the alley’s inhabitants, her words startled him.

“What?” Wyatt was nonplussed.

“I’m not offering to actually pay you to speak, you know. Just a Westie phrase.” She grinned, teasing, and leaned her head against his arm. They sidestepped a puddle.

“Yeah, it’s a Telen phrase too.” An almost wistful little grin settled on Wyatt’s face. “It’s colder than I thought it’d be.”

Lucy just gave him a withering look, and skirted around a homeless man, putting a few Joy into his tin. He just grinned, toothless, and tipped his rag cap in her vague direction. She winked back, grabbing Wyatt’s arm again once they’d passed the man. They walked in contented silence for a few moments, before Lucy broke it. 

“The team. The other team, I mean to say. They’re quite something.”

“Right. Um. I don’t know. They’re… they seem competent.”

“But you don’t trust them.” Lucy finished for him, her expression turning almost bitter for a brief moment before forcibly settling back into contentment.

“Not yet. I could, but there’s a reason Killjoys don’t work in big teams unless it’s a Black Warrant. Honestly, I don’t think you should trust them either,” Wyatt chuckled to himself. The atmosphere, previously calm, almost happy, dropped; Lucy frowned at him. His eyes went wide. “But of course you know that. I shouldn’t tell you what to do. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, Wyatt.” 

“It’s not, but okay.”

“You’re allowed opinions, you know.” She smiled, thin but true, and Wyatt had this sudden urge to cry.

“I was an ass to you, and to Jess, and then I made it seem like it was your fault.” He looked down, swallowing hard, and Lucy nodded in agreement beside him. “I’m sorry - for then and now. It’s not fair to either of you.”

“Yes. You were an ass.” She gripped his arm tighter. “But you’re making up for it. You’re getting better.”

Wyatt couldn’t help but stare at her, surprised. “I am?”

“Yes, you are. You realised what you did was wrong, and apologised. That’s improvement. Now shut up and keep walking, spaceman.” She gently shoved him forward, laughing slightly. “And if you say you’re sorry about that whole debacle one more time, I’m gonna have to embark on the impossible task of slapping the stupid out of you.” 

Wyatt laughed loud at that, the sound reverberating around the alley. 

Lucy finally smiled, full and happy, and they rounded a corner. They’d stopped underneath a junction of hanging lights, and the small lanterns swayed in the slight wind, casting long shadows around them. It was almost beautiful; the sun peeked over the horizon, streaking the sky with pink and gold, framing Qresh and Arkyn and Leith that were lit up, glowing in blue and silver and green. Wyatt couldn’t help but notice, smiling mouth agape slightly, and Lucy grinned even wider.

“Yeah, sunrise. One of the only times Westerly is actually pretty.”

“It’s not  _ that  _ bad here, Luce.” 

“Would you stay? If you had to?” While her face was still mirthful, her voice was sincere. Wyatt wondered if emotional whiplash was really a thing. He frowned. 

“I don’t know. Without a ship to get us between moons? It’d be hard, for sure.”

Lucy nodded again, suddenly resigned. They made their way over to a stall Lucy claimed she trusted, one that Wyatt immediately suspected was actually a front for the Jakk trade. Still, they bought hot skewers layered with some kind of meat and onions. It was warm, and savoury, and they enjoyed it - Wyatt devoured his in half the time it took Lucy to finish. They bought extra, for the others, and started the hike to Spring Hill.

**Outside Spring Hill Ruins - Westerly - The Quad Planetary System**

“Spring Hill, in its prime, was a Company bio-dome located just outside of the wall they put around Old Town - after what’s been dubbed the ‘Seventh Gen Bombings’, it was attacked by Westerlyn rebels in the Badlands, and, well. You see the results.” 

They were still walking - about half an hour had passed, and they could see the ruined building just over the hill crest. The heat was quickly building, despite being not long after sunrise, and Wyatt wiped his brow. 

“Lucy, I understood about three of the words you just said.”

She sighed. “The Seventh Generation Accords were written to allow Westerlyns to immigrate to Leith, if the family in question kept Company jobs for seven generations. Everybody thought it was a great idea, except nobody expected so many Westies to actually do it. Then there was a coup, then they rescinded on their promise, then people got murdered. The Company first bombed the shit out of Old Town, then essentially sieged them, and the newly renovated Spring Hill was in charge of that.”

Wyatt looked shocked. “That’s… fucked up.”

“Yeah.” Lucy couldn’t help but let out a bitter laugh. “Then some rogue Killjoys bombed the place. Fancy missile from a place in the Badlands.”

“Well, it did the trick.” A gruff voice rang out, and they both spun around, hands on their weapons. Flynn was stood a few paces behind them pointing his rifle at them and scowling. Rufus and Jiya were a few more paces behind him, further up on the hill. Lucy saw Wyatt roll his eyes and put his own weapon away. “Hey now, I wouldn’t relax too quickly. I might still kill you.”

“Yeah, sure you would.” Wyatt snorted. 

Rufus and Jiya made their way down towards them, holstering their weapons, and Lucy relaxed a little. “You could have been shot.”

“Not the first time.” Rufus quipped, and Wyatt noticed Jiya wince and Flynn send him a dirty glare. They all accepted the food, however, and Jiya winked at them in thanks. Rufus and Flynn just dived into their skewers, and they all took a few moments to breathe before resuming on their path down to Spring Hill. 

“You guys must be hungry, huh?” He asked, slowing down to settle into stride near Jiya and Rufus. 

Jiya snorted. “Yeah, and you two have Joy to waste on strangers. What’s your deal?”

Wyatt fidgeted, and Jiya took a step closer to him, nudging his shoulder with her own. He squinted at her in the bright sun, and took a drink from his flask. “I grew up on a small planet at the ass end of the J, then joined the military. I’m used to going hungry. Don’t want anyone else to feel like I did.”

Jiya looked mildly surprised. Wyatt met her eyes and shrugged.

“Which planet?” Rufus sidled further up to them both, still chewing his food.

“Uh, Telen.” Wyatt was uncomfortable and he knew that they knew he was. It was a test. 

“I used to be around there - a ring world, right? Silica storms, all that fun stuff?”

Wyatt cracked a smile. “A meteorological nightmare, you mean?”

Rufus and Jiya laughed, and Jiya took a bite of her food. She wrinkled her nose slightly at the tase, but took another bite as they continued chatting. Half an hour seemed to pass in the blink of an eye, in enduring strange meats and the heat of the sun beating down on their backs, and Wyatt was starting to think that he could get used to these new people. Lucy and Flynn were up ahead of them, walking quickly and in near silence. Eventually, Lucy spun around, so she could see them. 

“Come on, slowpokes.” Lucy shouted, jumping on top of a rock formation, and looked over at them from her vantage point. She was a shadow, the light glowing around her as she squinted at them, shielding her eyes. “Daylight’s wasting.”

Flynn looked like he wanted to stop and make camp just out of spite, but Jiya breezed past them, grabbing Flynn’s jacket to bodily haul him along like a naughty child. Rufus laughed a little, before patting Wyatt on the shoulder and following them. 

“He’s always like this with new people. He’s not really house-broken.” Rufus muttered, taking a swig of his drink, the blue liquid visible through the clear plastic bottle. 

They made it to the ruins in good time - the sun was nearly halfway to noon when they arrived. Rufus got straight to hacking the door, dodging falling rocks and hanging pipes, and everyone else decided to take a breather. Lucy paired off with Jiya with an excuse to check the perimeter, as Wyatt had expected, and he found himself alone with Flynn. Rufus was a few paces away, muttering under his breath about “rude interfaces”, and for the first time since meeting them, he felt nervous. 

Flynn was next to him, a small smirk on his face, blatantly watching him. Wyatt felt a sudden urge to do the same, but tried for more subtlety - he looked around first, checking vantage points and possible sniper hideouts. He didn’t see much, in reality, but he could hear Rufus’ increasingly frustrated grumbling and he took a leap of faith. He looked. 

He really, really looked. 

Holy  _ shit. _

Flynn was the epitome of ‘tall, dark and handsome’ - he was a solid head above Wyatt, with the muscle to match, the scruff, everything. All that was missing was some eyeliner and a frock coat, and he’d be something out of a magazine, a villain from Captain Apex or someone from Wyatt’s more…  _ personal  _ dreams. 

“What are you looking at?” Flynn growled - and Wyatt finally decided that his personality wasn’t as good as his looks. Their gazes met, and in a sudden moment of complete and utter recklessness, Wyatt responded.

“You.” 

At that, Flynn’s face twitched, like he was repressing a smile, but it quickly returned to his trademark scowl. Wyatt huffed out a laugh, almost reluctant, and Flynn tilted his head slightly.Before Flynn could respond, Rufus whooped, triumphant, and started shoving tools back into his bag. “Guys - I’m in! Come on!”

Lucy and Jiya jogged around the corner of the building, dodging piles of broken concrete and metal poles, and came to a stop in front of the three of them. Rufus slung his toolkit over his shoulder, still ridiculously happy, and Jiya hi-fived him, matching his grin. Lucy and Wyatt exchanged glances - Wyatt nodded at her, and they both got their guns ready. Jiya and Flynn did the same, putting Rufus in between them.

Wyatt gestured for Lucy to take point, a cheeky little smirk on his face. “Ladies first.”

“Rarely, in my opinion.” She still opened the door, checking the frame for traps first, and Wyatt heard Flynn snort next of him. 

The first hallway was completely destroyed, full of dust and rubble, and they decided against going down there. Instead, they split off into two teams - Jiya, Lucy and Rufus would go east, to where the blueprints said the server room was, and Wyatt and Flynn would head west into the working and residential area to look for the main office. They all tuned in their comms to the same frequency, and exchanged nervous nods as they split. 

  
  
  


Wyatt couldn’t help but be a little nervous, walking down a dimly-lit corridor in a bombed-out abandoned building with someone he’d known for precisely three days and who could definitely take him in a fight. 

Still, he was enjoying the chase. It was the best part of his job, something that being Sheriff wouldn’t have done for him. Crime on Telen was prolific, nearly relentless, and he’d have been getting paid dirt to do it. Being a Killjoy? Even in the first few months he saw more money than he’d have seen in a whole year back home. 

“You’re thinking.” Flynn’s tone was accusatory, almost rude, and it caught Wyatt’s attention. 

“You afraid that you can’t manage it? You need me to donate some brain cells?” He checked a doorway, but it was nothing more than shelves and rubble. They moved on. 

“I’m worried you don’t have enough to spare.” They were speaking lowly, Flynn’s voice almost a rumble in his chest from their proximity, and Wyatt couldn’t help but shiver. Flynn was smirking like he knew exactly what he was doing, and Wyatt wanted to punch him. 

They made their way down the long hallway, checking each room as they went. In its prime, it would have been a beautiful building, filled with plants and light, and the screens lighting the current hallway would have been showing scenery, he had no doubt. 

Now, however, it was decrepit, cobwebs and dust lining the space, the screens only showing white noise; Wyatt shouldered his gun but he was not about to let his guard down. He relaxed a little once Flynn did the same, but he kept all his weapons within easy reach anyway. 

_ “Seriously? They’re still diverting power here?”  _ He heard Rufus say over comms. 

“ _ Get working, Rocketman. We have a thief to kill.”  _ Jiya’s response was playful, and Flynn snorted next to him. 

Wyatt ignored their antics, and pressed on. It took him a moment to pick the lock on the largest door, and he felt Flynn’s eyes on him the entire time. 

“ _ Hey guys, status report.”  _ Lucy’s voice was preoccupied.

“Just gotten into the head office. We’ll keep you posted.” He stood up, tucking his lock-pick into the pocket on his thigh holster. He slung his rifle more securely onto his back, and took out his pistol. Flynn rolled his eyes, but followed Wyatt into the dimly-lit office, his rifle ready. 

They both holstered their weapons.

The office was shockingly large, even with the computer-desk taking up a good portion of the space - it was larger than Dhriti’s had been, but colder, more metallic. “Uh, Lucy? I’m gonna need to do some hacking to get into the computer.”

“ _ Okay. Remember your training.” _

“Don’t antagonise gingers?” He grinned, crossing the room to lean over the desk. 

She laughed on the other end. “ _ No, jakkhole. Stay calm, trust your instincts. You’ve got this.” _

“Okay.” He started hacking. “You’ve got this. We’ve got this… totally. Got this.”

Behind him, Flynn rolled his eyes. 

Wyatt ignored him, and focused on unlocking the computer. Flynn wandered around the room, checking for bugs or cameras or whatever the Hell he was checking for, dipping in and out of his peripheral vision before eventually settling in the large, comfortable chair behind the desk. Wyatt tried to act normal. 

“ _ Wyatt? Are you in yet?”  _ Rufus’ voice filled his ear, and he startled, almost ruining ten minutes of work. 

“No. It’s advanced - if you’re as good as you say you are, I could use an assist.”

_ “One assist, comin’ right up!”  _ Rufus mumbled, and Flynn snorted. Wyatt couldn’t help but give him a dirty look that time - the smug grin on Flynn’s face was punch-worthy. A high-pitched beep from the computer-table broke his focus, and even with his present company, Wyatt couldn’t help but let out an impressed little noise. 

“What?” Flynn’s tone was almost gloating. “You didn’t think we could do it?”

“You weren’t the one doing anything, actually.” Wyatt started tapping on the screen, and hooked up his PDD to the computer. “Computer, activate voice command. Search for all files relating to Emma Seyah Whitmore.”

“Searching.” The computer replied. 

“Jiya, what’s your situation down there?” Flynn muttered, staring at the computer. 

“ _ We’re all good. The security used to be tight, but there’s nothing stopping it now. Julian isn’t very pleasant, though.” _

Wyatt and Flynn’s eyes met, both of their brows furrowing in confusion.

“Who is Julian?” Wyatt whisper-shrieked to Flynn, whose mouth twitched in response. 

_ “Julian is the AI in this place. He’s rather… difficult. Karl seems to be showing him a good time, though.” _

“Lucy, I beg of you, please think before you speak.”

_ “Absolutely not.”  _ Lucy sounded smug, and Wyatt couldn’t help but chuckle. 

The computer-table beeped again. “Computer, download files to my PDD.”

“Downloading.” The computer replied.

  
  
  
  


**_okay i lied i did end up proof reading and i’m not sure where this is supposed to go. i’m leaving it, but i have no idea what it is or why i wrote it._ **

“Really?” Lucy crossed her arms, glaring. By Wyatt’s count, she was about two more words away from breaking every bone in Flynn’s body. What he wouldn’t give to see  _ that  _ particular match-up.

“I do. All Qreshis are the same, in my experience.”

“And how many Qreshis have you actually met?” Wyatt couldn’t help but interject.

“Far too many. More than you, probably.”

Lucy’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Yeah? And how about your family? How are they?”

Rufus paled, Jiya gasped, and Wyatt frowned, confused. Flynn looked like he’d just been hit on the head with a very large hammer. A vindictive little smile spread it’s way across Lucy’s face.

“Okay, let’s just-,” Wyatt began. 

“Wyatt, step back.”

“Luce, c’mon-,”

“I said.  _ Back. _ ” She glared at him, but her voice remained level. “ _ Now. _ ”

“Yeah, well the kids don’t like it when Mommy and Daddy fight.” Rufus quipped, just low enough so that they wouldn’t hear him. Jiya smacked him lightly on the arm in response. 

Lucy stepped up even closer to Flynn, and gave him a thin, almost withering look. “I may be born a Qreshi. I may have the title, I may have the bloodline, I might even have the goddamn sash. But that does.  _ Not.  _ Make me one of them.”

“And that’s why I don’t like taking orders from you.”

Wyatt just rolled his eyes, stepped between them, facing Flynn, and tried to glare at them both. 

(Lucy couldn’t help but notice how he looked like a pleading puppy. It was rather adorable.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am,,,, SO sorry you read this. so sorry. feel free to sue me for emotional distress.


	4. WIP Scenes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is just random scenes i don't really hate but also hadn't written anything else around so they're just,, in limbo.  
> the scene between wyatt and lucy here, with the 'i call shotgun', is the reason i wanted to write this fic.   
> rufus is an angel and we don't deserve him  
> stay safe,  
> nat <3

**The Royale - Old Town - Westerly [From Emotional Whiplash Part 2, before the teams meet.]**

When Lucy returned from the sexers, Wyatt was nursing an algae brew and brooding, again; a slightly sour look rested on his normally pretty features, but that could just have been his drink. 

“You aren’t a fan of the algae brew, are you?” Lucy slurred.

Wyatt looked confused. “The what?”

She gestured to the cup in his hands. Algae brew wasn’t really most people’s favourite choice, but it was a good cheap alternative to Hokk, and usually contained more alcohol. A working man’s drink, even if it was bright green and the froth tasted so bad it sometimes made you want to cut out your own tongue. 

“Algae brew!”

“So that’s what it’s called.” Wyatt hummed, taking another drink. “It’s not bad. Better than the shit back home.”

“What shit?” She wrapped herself around his arm, and took a huge swig of his drink. “What shit, Logan?”

He just looked at her, amused. “There’s this one drink - uh, moonshine. Clear like pure water, but tasted like absolute dog piss. Truly horrific. Even stronger than good Hokk.”

Lucy wrinkled her nose in response.

“Either of you two want a refill?” The bartender asked - he was a slim, attractive brunette, who’d only introduced himself as Lincoln. He flashed a winning smile at the pair before winking and leaning down to bring up a bottle of Hokk, and pouring each of them a glass. He slid the bigger one over to Lucy. “Such a beautiful lady deserves a proper drink. On the house.”

“Where’d you learn those manners, huh?” Wyatt frowned. “If she wanted anything, she’d ask.”

Lucy’s grip on his arm tightened painfully, but she smiled and took the drink all the same. When the bartender left, her grip on his arm loosened, and she leveled a glare at him. 

“Why do you always feel the need to defend my honor?” She punctuated her words with a gentle flick to his nose, like he was a naughty puppy. 

Wyatt rubbed his nose, looking genuinely contrite. “I dunno, Luce. I’m sorry.”

Lucy smiled a him, proud. “You’re getting better. Less and less like a stray we scooped from the street.”

“But still a mongrel.” Rufus appeared behind them, and Wyatt jumped. Lucy looked like she would have jumped too, if she wasn’t supernaturally badass. 

**_at some point after they’re all friends again and wyatt’s screwed up a few more times_ **

“Hey, Luce. You know we’re with you, right?” Wyatt asks. He seems genuinely unsure, and Lucy’s taken aback. 

“After all we’ve been through…?” She huffs out a laugh, bitter, acerbic, voice wet with unshed tears. “You’re still going to back my play?”

“After all  _ I put you through,  _ yes. I am.” Wyatt approaches her then, slowly, like she’ll spook. His hands ever so gently cup her shoulders. He’s touching her, sure, he’s in her space, but he’s not crowding her, she doesn’t feel trapped. The slight pressure on her shoulders is grounding. Her breaths even out a little.

She’s never seen him be so careful before, so tender, to look at her like she’s the only being in the whole damn J that matters. 

“You. What?”

Wyatt’s obviously ashamed, but he meets her eyes and properly rests his hands on her shoulders. “That’s how we work, right? You lead, I shoot, Rufus gives a shit. Even though I’ve been doing more screwing up than anything else lately.”

“You’ve got that right.”

They sit in it for a moment. 

Wyatt’s voice is hoarse. “I’m not saying that I won’t ever screw up again, but if you’ll have me? I’m there.”

It’s an apology, she realises.

“You want to bring Keynes to justice, I got your back.”

It’s a promise.

“You want to quit all this and run? I call shotgun.”

It’s a vow.

“I mean it. We don't have to stay here. We can just fly away. Never come back.”

Lucy wipes her eyes, and moves away. She sits on the couch. “Well, that sounds amazing, but we really can't do that. Grieving is for winners, and we haven't won yet.”

“I don't even know exactly who we're fighting.” Wyatt hesitates for a moment, but when she nods, he joins her, sitting exactly on the border of too close and too far. Just right. 

“You're right. We used to be a lot better at this.” Lucy wipes her eyes again. “God, look at you. You’ve been through just as much as me, and here you are, being my shoulder again.”

“It’s my favourite job. It still doesn’t mean that what you’re going through isn’t valid. Even with other people's suffering, you still matter.”

Lucy squints. “Who are you and what have you done with Wyatt Logan?”

He turns an adorable shade of pink, and scratches the back of his neck. 

“Rufus and Jess and Amy laid into me. They told me, very loudly and very graphically, that I was an asshole. Jiya joined in at some point, too. It was… well, I deserved it.” 

“Did they, now? And where was Flynn?”

“Oh, he was listening from around the corner. I do  _ not _ know how he thinks he’s sneaky.” It startles a laugh out of her, at least, and he pretends not to be grinning triumphantly. 

_ He’s at his best like this,  _ Lucy thinks.  _ When he lets himself be soft. When he’s not desperately clawing for control. _

Wyatt sobers up quickly, though, and turns to her. “I’m not sure how to make it up to you, not really. I’ve never been good at fixing my mistakes. But whatever you need from me, whatever I can give, I will. You have it. It’s yours.”

The look on his face takes her breath away. She’s never seen anyone look at someone with such pure devotion before. 

Yalena Seyah Preston, child assassin, Qreshi brat, never deserved it. Never earned it. It’s her. Lucy. Team leader, Killjoy, history buff. She’s earned this.

She’s never going to let it go. 

\--

(Wyatt also likes to think that the Men Holding Plants magazine under his mattress is a secret.)

\--

**_jiya meets denise_ **

She’s small but strong in a way that reminds Jiya of Lucy, even though they look nothing alike. Denise’s face is somehow both severe and delicate, her dark hair contrasting against her pale blue tunic. 

“Denise!” Wyatt calls, and she turns. She’s bruised and has a cut on her face, but stands with determination as they approach. “Hey. You okay?”

“Cuts and bruises, Logan.” 

  
  
  
  


**The Lifeboat - Old Town - Westerley - The Quad**

Lucy’s bunk is, well, just that. A bunk. 

Sure, she has her fair share of personal stuff - books, weapons, a secret stash of Hokk - but it’s just a room with a bed. She can’t afford to get attached, even though the Lifeboat is supposed to be home. 

It’s still a relief to crash down onto the edge of her bed and toe off her boots, eyes bleary with exhaustion. To reach up to the highest shelf in her wardrobe, behind the expensive Qreshi shoes and grab that little yellow bottle of Hokk. To take a long drink, and strip off her pants. To look in the mirror, and see what’s changed. 

It’s disconcerting, to be a stranger in your own body. 

  
  
  


**ON THE SLAVER SHIP, BUT IT’S LUCY’S POINT OF VIEW**

Wyatt’s holding his own. He’s doing better than Lucy expected him to, in all honesty, but it still sends a spark of worry into her chest. She keeps circling the ring. She needs to see everything. They seem to be talking smack - Lucy can’t quite read their lips, they’re moving too fast - but it’s helping them stay focused.  There’s a surprising amount of ogling happening.

“Rufus? Quick like a bunny. We need his comms open.”

_ “I’m working on it, Luce. Looks like a near-field communications blocker. If I can get to the hardware, I can disable it.” _

“Near-field…? Cheating prevention. Makes sense.” She winces as Flynn throws Wyatt into the fence. “Wyatt’s taking a beating here, Ru.”

_ “I’m going as fast as I can.” _

“Go faster.”

A glint in her peripheral vision. She casts her eyes around wildly to find the source, and they land on Karl. 

“Oh, you are shitting me.”

Karl is, to put it simply, an asshole. 

_ “Luce, you good? I’m almost there with the comms.” _

“I’m good, keep going.” 

“Lucy.” Karl says. He’s as deadpan as he usually is.

“Karl. Who's your collar?”

“In the cage with your boy. Level 4 warrant.”

“Damn.”

“Someone must really want this poor bastard gone.”

“Nah. Who does that? Got to be a clerical error, right?”

“Could be.”

“So, we should just call this off, go straighten it out with our brokers.”

“And as soon as I leave, you double back and claim the kill yourself? I don't think so.”

“You've got trust issues. You should see someone about that.”

“I don't think we've ever gone head to head, have we? Should be fun.”

**_more things happen, and then:_ **

She stalks up to the guard. “Call off the fight.”

“Yeah, just call it off. And have my tits handed to me by my boss? I don't think so.” 

“He’s a Killjoy. You can't keep him in there.” 

“The Company have no authority over Killjoys. He wants out, all he's got to do is ask. Until then, paying viewers love a bloodbath, and your boy looks like a bleeder.”

“Okay, I didn't want to be a jerk and pull rank, but I have a warrant for Roe.”

“Good for you.”

“You can't stop me from taking him!”

“Yeah, I don't have to help you, either. I know the law. Killjoys only have possession if they make physical contact. You've got to lay hands. Good luck with that.”

“Thanks for your help.” 

_ “Got it!”  _ Rufus shouts. 

**_wyatt is a himbo and telen is weird_ **

Wyatt’s waves off the Hokk, but his smile is grateful. “Sounds simple when you say it like that.”

“It is simple, Wyatt.”

His laugh is hoarse. “You do know that I didn’t finish school, right?”

“You what?”

“Yeah,” Wyatt nods, and takes another swig of coffee. “It’s all fun and games until you’re sixteen and keep misspelling ‘Caladium’.”

“What the Hells is a Caladium,” Lucy mutters into her cup of Hokk.

“You know how Telen is a ring-world at the ass-end of the J? And has silica rain storms that can strip the flesh from your bones in seconds?”

“You’ve mentioned it a couple times.”

“Well,  the closest we ever got to actual plant life was this green and pink thing called Caladium.”

“Sounds pretty.” Lucy says. 

Wyatt grins, all lopsided with mirth. “It is. Real pretty until it chokes you to death and eats your corpse.”

Rufus chokes on his drink. “Oh my God.”

Lucy squints dangerously. “Are you making this up?”

“No ma’am. Got scars right here.” Wyatt taps his left shoulder and bicep. “One of my dad’s hunting buddies had to shoot through me to kill it.”

“Now, we don’t have time to unpack all of that.” Rufus quips, and they all chuckle. 

_ “Given your vocal tenors, I sense that this is a good time to interrupt.”  _ The Lifeboat announces. 


End file.
